M2: Grading in Canvas

You have three main options for grading with Canvas: grade in a spreadsheet (Gradebook), grade and write comments while viewing student work (SpeedGrader), or grade offline (export to a spreadsheet). If you are using the SpeedGrader, you may also use the Canvas Rubrics function.

Refer to the Canvas Instructor Guide for information about grading in Canvas.

Rubrics

A rubric is an assessment tool that indicates achievement criteria across, and can be used with, all types of assessment; including written, oral, and visual assessments. Rubrics can help students understand assessment expectations and how their work will be graded. Instructors may find rubrics beneficial for providing feedback on or marking assignments, class participation or overall grades. The use of a rubric can help to standardize instructor and TA marking, and they can be helpful for students to conduct self- and peer review. Links to an external site.Since online courses often contain more formal feedback than in-person courses, rubrics can be useful tools for managing the workload associated with providing regular feedback. 

If your course already has rubrics developed, review them before sharing them with your students. A well-designed rubric describes what quality work is and uses descriptive, clear and specific language that students can understand. Your rubric will help students understand your grading criteria and provide an efficient way of providing feedback to your students. 

If your course does not have rubrics, consider developing rubrics in Canvas. Canvas allows you to add a rubric Links to an external site. to an assignment, a quiz, or a graded discussion. Doing so will allow you to comment and grade student work with the rubric attached in the SpeedGrader Links to an external site.. Scores from these rubrics can also be automatically entered in the gradebook in Canvas. When you choose to enable free-form comments for a rubric added to Canvas, you can save your comment to use again for other students. 

How to use rubrics effectively

Be transparent. Include the rubrics that will be used for the assignment along with the assignment details. These are not meant to be surprise criteria. Encourage students to reach out to you when they have questions about your rubric. You may even consider selecting samples of exemplary student work to supplementary rubrics. 

Integrate rubrics into assignments. You may ask students to self-assess or to give peer feedback using the rubric prior to submitting the work. If your course includes peer assessment, prepare students to use rubrics as intended.

Use it for teaching. A rubric indicates how students can move from one level of performance to another so they have a sense of their strengths and areas for improvement. This may help students make decisions about their current work to inform revision and improvement. When providing feedback using rubrics, inform students where they are doing well and where they need to improve. Students may need some guidance in using feedback.  

Practice using rubrics.  If you teach a course where multiple teaching assistants share the responsibility of grading, have them practice grading material using your rubric. For example, you can have your teaching assistants practice grading the same sample student submissions and then discuss their grading as a group. This will help them to better understand your rubric and reduce variations in interpreting and grading students’ work, thus enhancing the reliability of assessment. 

Adapted from Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo Links to an external site..

Checklist #5: Accessibility accommodations & academic concessions for assessments

If you have any students who have accessibility accommodations that are approved by the Centre for Accessibility or who request an academic concession (e.g., allowing additional time for an assessment, allowing multiple attempts, taking an assessment at a different time, extending a deadline), you will need to adjust assessment settings in Canvas. The information included in checklist 5 will guide you through changing these settings.

Quiz settings

Assignment settings