Rubrics and criteria in Canvas

Rubrics must be explicitly aligned with course learning outcomes and programme-level Graduate Profiles to ensure coherence and transparency.

Rubrics in detail

A rubric guides the evaluation of a student’s work or performance, typically in connection with an assessment task. It:

• guides students and markers by clearly outlining the expected quality for each identified criterion, ensuring alignment with course learning outcomes and Graduate Profile capabilities (Policy §4)
• includes clearly defined marks or points allocated to criteria, which must be outlined in the assessment instructions provided to students (Procedures §24).

Providing detailed marking criteria ensures specificity, clarity, and consistency across markers while reducing contestability (Policy §21–23). Where appropriate, rubrics should allow flexibility to reward innovative responses or divergent thinking (Policy §5). For example, criteria such as ‘originality’ or ‘creativity’ can be explicitly included in the rubric design.

In general, the more detail provided when setting marking criteria and grade allocations, the more specific and clear the rubric becomes. This reduces ambiguity, enhances consistency across multiple markers, and makes assessments less subjective.

Balancing rigour and flexibility

There are arguments for and against the perceived inflexibility of rubrics. While criteria must be pre-set to ensure fairness and transparency, this can limit opportunities to reward creativity or divergent viewpoints unless explicitly accounted for in the rubric design. For instance:

• A highly innovative idea may score poorly if it was not anticipated or represented within the rubric criteria.
• However, rubrics provide clarity by eliminating ambiguity about what is expected of students and how their work will be assessed.

To this end, rubrics are widely regarded as a fairer, more transparent, and equitable method of assessment for both students and markers.

Rubrics in Canvas – practical application

Rubrics are an effective tool for communicating expectations and assessment criteria to students. They can be added to Canvas Assignments, Quizzes, and Graded Discussions to help students understand how their work will be evaluated.

Where appropriate, consider using annotated examples of completed assessments alongside rubrics to help students understand how marking criteria apply to discursive or essay-based questions.

Assignments

• Rubrics must be made available to students when an assessment task is set, as required by university policy (Procedures §24).
• Publish rubrics alongside assignment instructions at release to ensure compliance.
• If supplementary materials are needed, attach a non-locked PDF rubric within assignment instructions.

Quizzes

• Rubrics can be added to quizzes to help students understand expectations and how their responses will be scored.
• Rubrics may also be added for alignment purposes when tracking outcomes inside the rubric.
• Rubrics cannot be used for grading quizzes, as quiz scores are calculated based on the points assigned to each quiz question.
• Rubrics are not visible to students during quizzes due to system limitations. To ensure transparency, embed rubric details within quiz instructions or provide a downloadable PDF version of the rubric (Procedures §24).
• Rubrics cannot be added to practice quizzes or ungraded surveys.

Feedback timing

Rubric-based feedback must be provided in a timely manner following formative assessments—typically within three weeks after submission—to facilitate improvement before subsequent tasks (Procedures §30).

Page updated 02/05/2025 (minor changes to imporove clarity)