Enhanced Rubrics Now Available in Canvas

Enhanced Rubrics is now enabled in Canvas and is the default rubric experience for all courses at LJMU. If you create, manage or grade using rubrics, you will notice an updated interface and some new functionality. The overall process remains familiar, and existing rubrics will continue to work and do not need to be recreated.

What's Changed?

Some of the most noticeable improvements include:

  • A redesigned rubric builder
  • The ability to save rubrics as drafts before publishing
  • Improved rubric management, including duplicate, copy and archive options
  • Drag-and-drop reordering of criteria and ratings
  • Support for point ranges within criteria
  • Three rubric layouts in SpeedGrader: Traditional, Horizontal and Vertical
  • Improved validation when rubric point totals differ from assignment points

Enhanced Rubrics is now the default rubric experience across Canvas, including Canvas Assignments, Graded Discussions and New Quizzes.

The overall process of creating, attaching and using rubrics remains familiar, but you will notice an updated interface and several new workflow improvements.

What Does This Mean for Existing Rubrics?

Existing Canvas rubrics will continue to work and do not need to be recreated.

When you open an existing rubric, it will now display using the Enhanced Rubrics interface. Your existing criteria, ratings and point values will remain available.

If you use Use this rubric for assignment grading, the way the rubric contributes to the assignment grade remains the same. Canvas will now also alert you if the rubric points do not match the assignment points, helping to identify potential setup errors.

If an existing rubric is used across multiple assessments, there are some restrictions on editing it. See Creating and Using Enhanced Rubrics for guidance on managing and editing reused rubrics.

Guidance and Support

To help staff get started, the Teaching and Learning Academy has published updated guidance on Creating and Using Enhanced Rubrics, including:

  • Creating and managing rubrics
  • Adding rubrics to Assignments, Graded Discussions and New Quizzes
  • Using rubrics for grading in SpeedGrader

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