Rubrics in Canvas

You can set up scoring and non-scoring rubrics. Once a rubric has been used to assess a student (i.e. once marking has commenced), the rubric cannot be edited. However, existing rubrics can be copied and used with other assignments.

The following video tutorial shows you how to create and manage rubrics for your Canvas course.

View the following Canvas guides for more information:

• Add A Rubric To An Assignment
• Add A Rubric To A Discussion
• Use A Rubric In SpeedGrader

Using different tools for rubrics

If you have set the Canvas Plagiarism Review (Turnitin similarity reporting) option on your assignment, you can mark and provide feedback using SpeedGrader with the Canvas rubric tool. This is the easiest and recommended approach, when all you want is a similarity report from Turnitin on student assignment submissions.

If you use Turnitin and Feedback Studio for receiving and marking assignments, you will be taken out of Canvas and into the external Turnitin tool to create your assignment. You will need to implement your rubric using Turnitin’s own rubric builder. There are disadvantages with this approach: the rubric can only be created, saved and reused inside the Turnitin Assignment (external tool) and marking groups is not supported.

REVIEW is a criteria-based assessment tool used for marking and feedback that uses a simple holistic rubric, but also allows for detailed and targeted feedback. The marks in REVIEW can be sent to Canvas automatically for grades submission. 

SPARKPlus is a tool used predominantly by students for self and peer assessment activities (group work). SPARKPlus is not a marking tool, but can be used to help moderate grades. SPARKplus uses a format similar to a single-point rubric relying on written feedback to describe where a peer excels or falls short of the criteria and in turn, developing students’ skills in evaluative judgement. Similarly, you can run formative benchmarking activities in SPARKPlus to familiarise students with your rubric and align expectations of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ work.