Self Assessment Rubrics are here!

[ArohiDesai]

In an effort to create a more engaging teaching and learning experience, educators have looked for ways to offer students more structured self assessment opportunities directly within Canvas LMS.

Once available, educators using both Enhanced Rubrics and Assignment Enhancements can allow Self Assessment rubrics for Canvas Assignments. Self Assessments encourage students to take ownership of their learning by actively reviewing and evaluating their own work based on the same criteria used by their instructors. This can lead to an increased understanding of assignment expectations and deeper engagement with course material and learning objectives.

How Does Self Assessment Work?

Once enabled for the assignment, students have access to a Self Assessment Rubric, allowing them to review and score their work, if enabled by their instructor.

Please note, that Self Assessment cannot be enabled for an assignment if a submission has already been made or if the due date has already passed. To minimize potential confusion, we’ve added the following tool tip, directly in the user interface.

Once enabled, students will see a “Self-Assess” button. Once they complete their submission, they can review, score, and comment on their work using the attached rubric’s criteria.

Self Assessment does not influence or affect a student’s grade or mark, however, instructors can view Self Assessment scores within SpeedGrader in an effort to better understand their students' interpretations and performance. 

Self Assessment is currently available only in the web version of Canvas and is available in the beta environment and will be available in production with the March 15th Release. Mobile access will be coming later this year. 

As always, we value your feedback and encourage you to test Self Assessment in your beta environments, it’s available there now. Feel free to share your experiences with the Enhanced Rubrics or Assignment Enhancement User Groups. 

Thanks, and keep learning!

[ProfessorBeyrer]

Thank you @ArohiDesai. I'm glad to see it already enabled on my .beta instance. I like how the student's self-assessment is outlined with a dotted line as I use the rubric to evaluate the submission.

I have one question and two suggestions:

Can the student view their self-assessment after they have been graded? I used the Test Student user and was able to self-assess but after the submission was graded the only rubric assessment viewable by the Test Student user is the one done by the instructor. As a student I would like to see how my self-assessment compares with my instructor's assessment.

My first suggestion is to hide the Self-Assess button until after the assignment is submitted. Currently the self-assess button is visible but inactive, and it's not obvious to the student that they have to submit before they can self-assess. It would be easier for them if that button did not become visible until after they submit the assignment. It is in a good lace - in between the New Attempt and Next buttons.

Finally, please match the points displayed on the level selector buttons for each criterion match the points that the student would be awarded if the instructor selects that level when they assess the submission. The embedded screenshot shows an example. The criterion (Writing style) is worth 5 points, and the levels are worth 5, 3, and 0 respectively. Even though the true points are reflected automatically as the buttons are selected, I was confused when I did my first self-assessment as I was focused on the number I was selecting, not the number that appeared in the TextInput field or that's on display within the rubric that appears on the assignment page.

Self-assessment criterion

[jsowalsk]

@ArohiDesai This seems to be only working in Beta when a new assignment and rubric are created. Is that accurate?

[ArohiDesai]

@ProfessorBeyrer Thank you so much for the feedback. A few follow-up questions:

Can the student view their self-assessment after they have been graded? I used the Test Student user and was able to self-assess but after the submission was graded the only rubric assessment viewable by the Test Student user is the one done by the instructor. As a student I would like to see how my self-assessment compares with my instructor's assessment. 

Arohi: You're right and I understand the need to have it visible to further help drive student alignment with understanding the expectation. I will take your feedback to the team and will review how to incorporate that. 

My first suggestion is to hide the Self-Assess button until after the assignment is submitted. Currently the self-assess button is visible but inactive, and it's not obvious to the student that they have to submit before they can self-assess. It would be easier for them if that button did not become visible until after they submit the assignment. It is in a good lace - in between the New Attempt and Next buttons.

Arohi: Understand the lack of clarity. Will discuss options with our designer about whether we could have a hover over info bubble to convey that the student needs to submit the assignment to self-assess is more aligned with our design principles or enabling the button after student has submitted the assignment (the placement might change to bring attention) but point noted. 

@jsowalsk That's right. It is scheduled to be released to production March 15th. 

[jsowalsk]

@ArohiDesai I see it in Beta for previously and new created assignments:

    Is it the enhanced rubric in this section? https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Releases/Canvas-Release-Notes-2025-03-15/ta-p/634458#toc-h...

[ProfessorBeyrer]

I'm not sure if this change has already been made but want to amend the question, @ArohiDesai, that I asked earlier. Students *can* see their self-assessment after the instructor has assessed their submission by selecting the Self-Assess button on the assignment page. The Rubric tray still shows the student's self-assessment, so the student can view that at the same time they are viewing the instructor's assessment. Unfortunately the tray overlays part of the instructor's assessment, so it would still be nice if the Select Grader pull-down could include the self-assessment in addition to the instructor's assessment. It would be best if the student view is the same as the instructor's view, where the student's self-assessment ratings show a dotted line border and the instructor's ratings show a solid line border.

Embedded is a screenshot showing the overlay from the student's view.

Student self-assessment overlays the instructor's assessment

[DiogoCosme]

This is great! I had to use New Quizzes for this, and it didn't work out great. I'm just not happy with students not being able to self-assess AFTER the due date. Do you really think students follow due dates?

[leward]

@ArohiDesai 

I see this feature in our beta instance, but not Canvas test.  Both environments have the Rubric Enhancements and Assignment Enhancements feature options enabled?  Did the feature make it to production last March? We don't have enhanced rubric enabled on productions, but the fact that it isn't mentioned in the Enhanced Rubrics guide and coupled with the fact that it doesn't seem to be available on Canvas test makes me wonder whether it has been released.

[YasiAfsharnive]

Hi @leward! The Student Self Assessment feature was released to production in March, but it requires both Assignment Enhancements and Enhanced Rubrics to be enabled. The Canvas test environment only reflects what’s active in production, so if Enhanced Rubrics isn’t enabled in production, it won’t appear in test. We’re also updating the Enhanced Rubrics guide to include this feature, thanks for pointing that out!

[leward]

Hi @YasiAfsharnive ,

Thanks for your quick response.  Canvas feature options are not affected by Canvas refreshes, and regardless, the Enhanced Rubrics and Enhanced Assignments features are enabled in our Test environment.  Are you saying that, even with this options enabled, new assignments created on Canvas Test will not show the Student Self Assessment option?  If that were true, why is it visible on Canvas beta, which is also regularly refreshed with production data.

[YasiAfsharnive]

Hi @leward. Do you mind emailing me the URL's of the environment where you are not seeing self-assessment so we can look into this for you? yasaman.afsharnive@instructure.com. 

[YasiAfsharnive]

Hi @leward, the issue is resolved. You should now be able to access self-assessment in your test environment. Thanks for flagging this! 

[ar3183]

Does this feature work for discussion forums?

[YasiAfsharnive]

@ar3183 Not yet, but it's on our radar! 

[a_craik]

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Assignment-Enhancements-Users/Feedback-on-new-self-assessment-fun... - please see this post for all feedback after using "written feedback" style rubric. Most suggestions are developmental but there is a UI bug in SpeedGrader which makes it very hard to assess the students' self-assessments:

EDIT - more bugs noted. Current list:

• The feedback comments from students are clipped - no amount of page zooming or dragging the vertical bar wider allows me to see the missing fragments of text
• If a student hasn't completed the self-assessment, I can't access it in SpeedGrader to use it for feedback
• If a student hasn't completed the self-assessment, and I click on the "view rubric" button, the grade box disappears

Those are just the bugs. See the link above for the dev requests

[susanstirrup]

@ArohiDesai 

Is this still the case: 

students not being able to self-assess AFTER the due date?

I enter a due date (which I call a best-by date) and then a final deadline 2 weeks later when the assignment closes. I encourage students to submit by the best-by date and then we can engage in a feedback loop and they can revise and resubmit up to the closing date. It would be great if the self-assessment rubric was available until the close date.