Hey Canvas Community,
If you’ve been following along with the evolution of Enhanced Rubrics, you know this feature has been quite a journey from its first release to now. We’ve listened, learned, and refined, and today we’re reintroducing Enhanced Rubrics as the foundation for a smarter and more flexible evaluation experience in Canvas.
This update is about improving rubrics, but it will also unlock what comes next.
Rubrics are one of the most powerful tools in Canvas - they help guide submission outcomes and feedback. But as teaching and learning evolved, it became clear that our original rubric tool needed to evolve, too.
Enhanced Rubrics were built to do just that: deliver a modern, intuitive, and scalable experience that supports today’s classrooms and tomorrow’s innovations.
Since its Feature Preview release in 2024, Enhanced Rubrics have become the key to unlocking other major features in Canvas, like AI Rubric Generation, Student Self Assessment, and future enhancements such as multi-rubric support.
To access all of those improvements, enabling Enhanced Rubrics is your first step.
We took everything you loved about rubrics and made it better.
The new design makes creating and managing rubrics more intuitive than ever. Cleaner layouts, better visibility, and improved usability mean you can spend less time clicking and more time teaching.
A redesigned Rubric Index Page makes it easy to see where rubrics are in use and manage them at the course level.
Enhanced Rubrics give instructors new flexibility with:
Enhanced Rubrics also bring a smoother, more personalized grading experience—both for instructors and students.
The Enhanced Rubrics you see today are the direct result of community input from the Feature Preview phase, initially launched in July of 2024. Educators, admins, and instructional designers who participated in early testing and adoption helped to further shape its design, performance, and usability. End user feedback has led to major refinements like improved responsiveness, better SpeedGrader integration, and simplified rubric creation tools.
Read our user group discussion on community feedback → Enhanced Rubrics User Group
And we’re not stopping there. We’ve recently released critical bug fixes and performance improvements identified during testing, improving the overall experience based on your feedback.
The Enhanced Rubrics feature flag is currently available in Feature Preview and can be enabled at the account or course level. This feature is planned to go to ‘General Availability’ in 2026, meaning the feature flag will default to ‘on’ for all users.
And what’s even better? No migration is needed. Once you enable the feature flag within an account or course, your existing rubrics will be updated to the Enhanced Rubrics interface automatically.
Learn more: Explore the Enhanced Rubrics guides →
Watch the overview video: See how to enable Enhanced Rubrics and start building today.
Enhanced Rubrics have come a long way since their first release and they’re ready to take your assessment experience to the next level. Thank you to everyone who’s shared feedback, tested features, and helped shape this journey.
We can’t wait for you to see what’s next.
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