Creating and Using Rubrics for Assessment 

checklist on a clipboard

A rubric is a scoring tool that breaks down the expectations for an assignment into grading criteria. Rubrics serve as a guide for students to complete an assignment successfully and as a measurement tool for instructors to determine to what degree students have met the assignment’s expectations. Rubrics are highly flexible and can be used for a wide variety of assessments. Besides instructor grading, rubrics can also be useful for peer review and student self-evaluation. This guide provides an overview of the different types of rubrics, considerations for creating and using them, as well as examples you can borrow from.

Table of Contents

Advantages of Using Rubrics

Using rubrics for assessment can benefit both the student and the instructor. Rubrics provide transparency in how an assignment will be graded, helping students understand their instructor’s expectations. For instructors, using rubrics can help ensure that their assignment’s grading criteria are aligned with course and assignment outcomes. Grading with a rubric can also increase consistency and objectivity, whether you are the sole grader or are working with a co-teacher or TA. Although creating a rubric requires an initial time investment, it can make your grading process more efficient in the long run.

Rubric Types and Components

Rubrics can be used to assess a wide range of activities – formative and summative assessments, written and oral reports, individual and group projects, and everything in between. Most rubrics list the criteria along the left side and performance level categories (e.g., “meets” or “does not meet” expectations) along the top, creating a matrix for scoring. Other rubrics may omit these performance level categories in favor of freeform comments. A rubric may or may not have points attached to each criterion, depending on how the rubric is being used to assess a student’s work.

Criteria

checklistA rubric defines the criteria used to assess an activity, project, or performance. On a typical rubric, the criteria are listed along the left side, and the document is divided into rows. The number of criteria a rubric contains will vary greatly depending on the complexity of the task being assessed and how granular the instructor would like the grade breakdown to be. A rubric for a simple activity might only have two or three criteria, whereas a rubric for a complex summative assessment might have ten.

Generally speaking, a rubric’s criteria should be:

  • Mutually exclusive. Criteria should not overlap with one another to avoid awarding or detracting points for the same category more than once.
  • Objective. Criteria should be measurable and rely on concrete, observable evidence. Try to avoid using subjective terminology like “interesting” or “good.”
  • Exhaustive. The listed criteria should cover all aspects that an assignment is designed to assess. Likewise, the point total for a rubric should match the point total for the activity.

Additionally, a rubric’s criteria should align with the assignment and course outcomes. As you develop a rubric, compare its criteria with the outcomes of the assignment. Are there any elements you need to assess that are not captured in the rubric? Are there elements in the rubric that are irrelevant to the assignment’s purpose? If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, consider revising your rubric’s criteria to more accurately reflect the assignment’s learning outcomes.

Performance Levels

Most rubrics are broken down into performance levels that describe the quality of a student’s work and/or the level of completeness. Like criteria, the number of performance level categories can vary greatly depending on the type of assessment and the preferences of the instructor. Including more performance levels allows for more granular grading, but also makes a rubric more complex. Performance levels are usually listed as a scale along the top of a rubric, dividing the document into columns.

Example Performance Level Scales

2 Performance Levels 3+ Performance Levels
  • Meets Expectations
  • Does Not Meet Expectations
  • Exceeds Expectations
  • Meets Expectations
  • Does Not Meet Expectations
  • Complete
  • Incomplete
  • Advanced
  • Proficient
  • Developing
  • Beginner
  • Yes
  • No
  • Excellent
  • Good
  • Fair
  • Poor
  • Unacceptable/Inadequate

Descriptions

If you include performance levels, you should also explain what these levels look like for each criterion. For example, if “organization” is a criterion for a written report, what exactly does “excellent” organization in a report look like? What about a paper with “good” or “fair” organization? These descriptions should clarify any ambiguity about the criteria and the performance levels, guiding students in their successful completion of the assignment.

Points

scoreboard

It is common for each criterion of a rubric to have a point value tied to it. The point values can be the same for each criterion, or they can vary if some criteria are a bigger contributing factor to students’ success on the assignment compared to the other criteria. If the rubric uses performance levels, each performance level should be assigned a point value as well. The highest performance level is awarded the maximum point value for a given criterion, with the rest of the performance levels assigned decreasing amounts of points accordingly.

If you’re not sure how to define point categories on a rubric, first determine the maximum number of points you’d like to award for a given criterion. Then, set a point value scale based on this maximum point value and the number of performance categories. Not every point scale will contain “0”, but if the criterion is something that a student could hypothetically earn no points on, you may want to factor that into your point scale.

You will also need to decide if you want each performance level to correlate to a single point value or encompass a range of point values. Using point value ranges allows for more flexibility in terms of scoring but it can also make grading more complicated than using set values. For example, if the “excellent” performance level is worth between 8 and 10 points, that allows you to assign a score of “9,” “9.5”, or any score that falls within that range when grading.

Example Point Scales

Let’s say you have a criterion worth 10 points and five performance level categories. Here are a few ways you could go about setting your point value scale depending on your grading needs. Notice that for the “Point Value Range” example there must not be any gaps or overlaps in the score ranges.

Set Point Values (Omitting Zero) Set Point Values (Including Zero) Point Value Range
Excellent: 10 pts

Good: 8 pts

Fair: 6 pts

Poor: 4 pts

Incomplete/No Submission: 2 pts

 Excellent: 10 pts

Good: 7.5 pts

Fair: 5 pts

Poor: 2.5 pts

Incomplete/No Submission: 0 pts

 Excellent: 10 > 8 pts

Good: 8 > 6 pts

Fair: 6 > 4 pts

Poor: 4 > 2 pts

Incomplete/No Submission: 2 > 0 pts

Using Rubrics Without Points

It is also possible to use a rubric without point values. If you’d like, you can grade students using just the performance categories or by writing freeform comments for each criterion. This can be useful for low-stakes formative assessments, in-class practice activities, and peer review exercises. Using rubrics without points also allows you to provide qualitative feedback for work graded on a complete/incomplete basis.

Recommendations for Using Rubrics

students adding post-it notes to a wall

In addition to the decisions outlined above regarding criteria, performance levels, descriptions, and points, here are a few recommendations to consider when using rubrics. These strategies can help you make the most out of rubrics as both a teaching tool and an assessment tool. Click on a suggestion to expand the accordion and read more.

One of the key advantages of using rubrics for assessment is that they can make your expectations more transparent to students. By sharing the rubric for an assignment in advance, students can use it as a guide to successfully complete the assignment. This practice is beneficial for all students but has particularly positive impacts for certain demographics that may require additional transparency in assignment directions, like first-gen students and neurodivergent students. 

There is quite a bit of research that supports the idea of involving students in the assessment creation process to enhance their engagement and learning (Stiggins & Chappuis, 2005; Lubicz-Nawrocka, 2018; ). One way to achieve this is by developing rubrics together as a class. This work can be done synchronously through brainstorming session during class or asynchronously through a discussion board or survey. By co-authoring rubrics with your students, you allow them to develop a deeper understanding of their own learning and the nature of assessment. If you’d like to learn more about this strategy, this model for collaborative rubric construction from the Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice is a good place to start. 

Sometimes showing is more powerful than telling. In addition to providing written descriptions of your expectations within the rubric itself, consider providing a couple examples of what exemplary, satisfactory, or unsatisfactory work looks like. These could be resources that you’ve created, examples sourced online, or anonymized student work from a previous semester that you've received consent to use. Keep in mind that you can share just part of a work sample if you want it to serve as an example for a specific criterion. 

Although you can grade with rubrics in Microsoft Word or write out comments on paper, using the rubrics tool in Canvas has its own unique advantages. When you attach a Canvas rubric to an assignment or graded discussion, the rubric will also show up in SpeedGrader, making it very quick and easy to grade online submissions. To grade with a Canvas rubric, simply click a box for each criterion to indicate the student’s performance level. You can also type comments for each criterion. If you check the box “use rubric for assignment grading” when attaching a rubric to an assignment, Canvas will even auto-calculate the point total as you fill out the rubric. Plus, once you’ve built a rubric in Canvas, you can easily reuse it in any of your other courses. You can learn more about creating and using Canvas rubrics in the Canvas instructor guides or by setting up and consultation with CATL. 

Example Rubrics

Not sure where to start? See the examples below for rubrics for various assessments, projects, and disciplines. You might also consider using a GAI tool like Microsoft Copilot to speed up the drafting process.

Questions?

CATL is available for consultations if you have any questions about rubrics or are wondering how to create your own. Send us an email or fill out our consultation form to set up a meeting with a CATL member. Or drop us a comment below to let us know how you’ve rubrics in your own courses!

Additional Resources & Further Reading

Web Guides from Other Universities

Books

Articles and Research

Steps Towards Assuring Academic Integrity

Article by Nathan Kraftcheck.

A common initial concern I often hear when meeting with new distance education instructors is how to prevent cheating and plagiarism. How can they ensure the rigor of their assessments? Although there is not a 100% successful strategy that one can adopt, neither is there a 100% successful strategy for eliminating cheating during in-person assessments (Watson & Sottile, 2010). However, we still strive to limit academic dishonesty to the best of our abilities. I’ve provided some practices below that you may find useful in both reducing the opportunity for students to commit academic misconduct, and their motivation to do so in your class.

Quiz and exam building strategies to save time and reduce cheating

One way in which online instructors reduce time spent grading is through online quizzes and exams. Systems like Canvas have allowed for automatic grading of certain question types for many years (open-ended manually graded questions are also available). Depending on an instructor’s goals, course objectives, and discipline, automatically scored online quizzes and exams can be a useful tool.

  • As a formative learning activity in itself—a way for students to check their own learning in low-stakes assessment.
  • As a replacement for other low-stakes work. This can be useful in offloading discussion board fatigue that many students cited over the Fall of 2020.
  • As a method to assess foundational knowledge that is necessary for future work in the major or program.
  • As a manageable way to assess a large number of students.

Decorative icon of a stopwatchWhen including online quizzes and exams in a course, the ability for students to look up the answer is always a concern. Instructors may be tempted to direct students to not use external materials when taking their assessment. Unfortunately, just asking students not to use such material is unlikely to find much success. A more common, practical approach is to design the quiz or exam around the fact that many students will use external resources when possible.

  • Allow multiple attempts.
  • Consider drawing questions from a pool of possible questions. This can allow the students to engage with the same concept, framed differently, helping them work on the underlying concept instead of mastering a specific question’s language.
  • Let students see the correct answer after the quiz or exam is no longer available. This can help if you'd like to allow your students to use their quiz or exam as a study guide.
  • Draw questions from a pool of possible questions—each student will have a randomized experience this way and depending on how large the pool is, some students may not see the exact same version of the questions (assuming different wording across questions that measure the same concept).
  • Shuffle the order of possible answers.
  • Limit how long the quiz or exam is open if you want to mimic a closed-book assessment—don't allow students time to look up all the answers.
  • Let students see the correct answer after the quiz or exam is no longer available. This can help if you'd like to allow your students to use their quiz or exam as a study guide.
  • Only show one question at a time—this can limit a student's ability to look up multiple questions at once and also limit their ability to share the questions with a friend.
  • Set availability and due dates for your quizzes or exams.
  • Modify your questions slightly from semester to semester. Do this for 100% of your publisher-provided questions—assume copies of publisher questions and their answers are available online for students to look up.

For more detailed information on these items, please look at this page for guidance.

Less high-stakes assessment and more low-stakes assessment

It’s fairly common for teaching and learning centers to promote an increase in the use of lower-stakes assessments and a decrease in the higher-stakes assessments. This might seem counterintuitive because more assessments could mean a greater opportunity to cheat, right? It may also seem like additional work since students would be required to take assessments more frequently. However, there is good reason to advocate for more frequent, smaller assessments.

  • Students have a better understanding of how well they grasp discrete topics.
  • Students will know earlier if they’re not doing well, instead of at the first midterm.
  • Students learn from recalling information—a quiz can be more effective than just studying.
  • Students learn more through repeated assessment in comparison to one assessment (Brame & Biel, 2015; Roediger & Butler, 2011).

“Done” / “not done” grading

For low-stakes formative student assignments, consider adopting a done/not done approach. This could take the form of any assignment you could quickly assess for completion, for instance, a brief reflective or open-ended written assignment submission or discussion post. By keeping the activity brief and focused, you’ll be able to quickly assess whether it was done correctly while allowing students to re-engage with class topics by making meaning from what they’ve learned.

From the University of Waterloo:

  • What new insights did I develop as a result of doing this work?
  • How has my perspective changed after doing this assignment?
  • What challenges to my current thinking did this work present?
  • How does work in this course connect with work in another course?
  • What concepts do I still need to study more? Where are the disconnects in my learning?

Working up to larger projects and papers

Decorative icon of an increasing chart.For larger, summative projects that by their nature dictate a large influence on final course grades, consider breaking up the project into smaller steps (Ahmad & Sheikh, 2016).

For a written paper assignment, an instructor could:

  • Start by asking students to select a topic based on a parameter you provide and find source material to support their topic.
  • Students submit their topic description and source material as an assignment. Grade as complete/incomplete and provide guidance if necessary on topic and/or sources.
  • Ask students to create an annotated bibliography.
  • Students submit an annotated bibliography to an assignment. Grade as complete/incomplete.
  • Create a discussion in Canvas where students can talk about their topics (assuming they're all somewhat related). Grade as complete/incomplete.
  • Ask students to create a rough draft. Utilize peer grading in Canvas to off-load grading and include student-to-student communication and collaboration.
  • Students submit a second draft or final draft. Grade with a rubric.

By asking students to select their topic and work through the writing process on a step-by-step basis, the instructor can see the process the student takes through the paper’s development, and students are not able to procrastinate and thus won’t feel pressured to plagiarize someone else’s work (Elias, 2020) as they’re already doing most of the work anyway. This process also discourages plagiarism as there is not as much of an emphasis on the finished product, as the possible score is distributed across multiple activities (Carnegie Mellon University).

Built-in flexibility

Dropping lowest scores

Another way to reduce the appeal of cheating in courses is to offer some flexibility in grading (Ostafichuk, Frank & Jaeger). This can take many forms, of course, but one common to classes using a learning management system like Canvas is to drop the lowest score in a grouping of similar activities. As an example, an online instructor might have a Canvas Assignment Group containing all of their graded quizzes. The instructor can then create a rule for that Assignment Group which will tell Canvas how to calculate scores of the activities inside. For example, the instructor might set the Assignment Group to exclude each student’s lowest score in that group when calculating the final grade. The quiz score that is dropped varies from student to student, but each would have their lowest score dropped.

Student options

Building off the concept of dropping the lowest score students achieve from a group of assignments, you can also use this functionality to build in student choice. For example, if you have more than two discussion activities in your class that meet the same learning objective, consider letting students select the one that they want to participate in and then “drop” the other.

Late work leeway

Another option for flexibility is to set the “due” dates for your graded activities but leave the “available to” date empty or make it the absolute last date and time you would accept submissions. This will allow your students to submit their work beyond the due date and have it flagged as “late”, but also reduce the likelihood of a student cheating on an assignment if they’ve procrastinated or otherwise fallen behind in their coursework. You can also create late work grading policies within Canvas that automatically deduct a percentage of possible points on a daily or weekly basis.

Make use of rubrics

Decorative icon of a rubric.  Research has shown that rubrics are effective tools in shining light on the most important elements of an assignment, setting student expectations for quality and depth of submitted work, and simplifying the grading process for instructors (Kearns). By making a rubric available ahead of time, students have another opportunity to see how their work will be graded and what crucial elements they should include. They can also address equity issues between students, leveling the field between students whose education has prepared them to succeed in college versus those who have not (Stevens & Levi, 2006). Some instructors have found that using rubrics reduces their time spent grading, possibly because of the focused nature of what is being assessed (Cornell University; Duquesne University).

Canvas has built-in rubrics that can be attached to any graded activity. Rubrics are used mostly in Canvas Assignments and Discussions. They can be added to quizzes but aren’t used in the actual grading process for quizzes and would be used as guidance for students only. To learn more about rubrics, take a look at this rubrics guide by Boston College. There’s also a more task-oriented guide from Canvas, available here.

What do you think?

What techniques have you found useful in limiting academic misconduct in your classes? Let us know by dropping a comment below!