What are Rubrics?

Rubrics are matrixes or tables that have three essential features: criteria students are expected to focus on, rating levels to indicate different achievement levels and the scoring associated to the rating.   Faculty can also choose how to apply rubrics: comments only, comments and points or points only. 

What are the benefits of using Rubrics?

From a student’s perspective:

• Rubrics can help students have a better understanding of how their instructor assess the assignments. A list of desired performance in the rubric can also help students understand the key indicators of their learning outcome.
• Rubrics can help students score their own/peer’s work when doing self-reflection or peer-reflection.

From an instructor’s perspective:

• Using rubrics can save you time when doing repetitive work.
• Rubrics can also provide objective feedback instead of subjective feedbacks like “great work”. The objective feedback comes from the list of desired performance and the level where the student is at for that specific performance. 
• Prioritize the feedback. This is important for a big assignment like a final term paper or an essay where you will be providing a lot feedback to your students. By using rubric, you can clearly see where the students do well/don’t do well.
• Rubrics provide an excellent guide if there are multiple graders grading student's assignment.
   

How to access Rubrics in myCourses Canvas course:

Canvas has moved Rubrics to the Course Menu area from its previous location of Outcomes.  The reason for this move was to make Rubrics more accessible and provide a more intuitive workflow since Outcomes are not required when using a rubric. 

The Rubrics link is a course tool for faculty and can’t be accessed by students.  The Rubrics area displays all rubrics associated to any course the faculty is associated with.  A Rubric is meant to be associated directly on an assessment; assignment, discussions or quizzes.  The same rubric can be used for multiple assessments.  Be aware that when a rubric is used in multiple assessment it can’t be changed.

More information about using Rubrics

Rubrics Overview article