How to add a rubric to a Canvas assignment

In Canvas, by hand

1. In Course Navigation, click Assignments, then click the assignment’s name.
2. On the assignment page, click Create Rubric. To reuse a rubric from another assignment or course, click Find Rubric instead, pick the course, click the rubric, and click Add.
3. Give the rubric a title. For each row (Canvas calls them criteria), write what you are grading and the ratings, from full marks down, with points for each. Click Draft New Criterion to add another row.
4. Save the rubric.
5. To use it for grading, open the rubric’s settings with the Edit icon, tick Use this rubric for assignment grading, and click Save Rubric.

If you see a +Rubric button instead of Create Rubric, your school is on Canvas’s older rubric screen. The idea is the same: click it, fill in the rows and points, and tick Use this rubric for assignment grading before you save.

The two things people miss

• Make the points match. If you grade with the rubric and its total doesn’t match the assignment’s points, Canvas warns you and offers to Change the assignment’s points or Leave different. Usually you want them to match.
• A shared rubric can’t be edited in place. Once a rubric is used on more than one assignment, Canvas makes you save a copy when you edit it.

With Course++, in one sentence

Course++ is a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox (and Edge, from the Chrome Web Store). You open your Canvas course, open Course++ beside it, and type what you want in plain words. It works inside the Canvas tab you already have open, using your own Canvas account, so it can only do what you can do, and its changes show up in Canvas as yours.

Course++ finds the persuasive essay, writes four rows with ratings that add up to 20 points, and attaches the rubric to that assignment in your course. Say what the rows should be if you have them in mind (“claim, evidence, counterargument, conventions”), or let it draft them from the assignment and edit afterwards.

• Say how you’ll use it. If you want to grade with it in SpeedGrader, say so, and check the setting on the assignment before you start grading.
• Read it before your students do. A rubric is a promise about how work will be graded. Course++ drafts it; you are the one who decides it’s right.
• It never sees student work. Course++ builds the rubric. It doesn’t grade, and it refuses to read submissions or grades.