How do I create or edit a Rubric?

Aangepast op Jul 29, 2025

This article explains how to create a Rubric. There are also videos in this article that explain how to create a Holistic, Analytical, and weighted Rubric.

Content

Creating a Rubric
- Set the Overall Score
- Set visibility and other options of the rubric
Edit a rubric
Creating a holistic rubric
Creating an analytical rubric
Creating a weighted rubric

Creating a Rubric

Navigate to Course Tools in the navbar of the course.
Click Rubrics
Click on New Rubric

The following image will appear.

Give the Rubric a name
Set the status of the Rubric to Published

Rubrics set as "Draft" or "Archived" cannot be associated with an assignment or discussion.

3. For Type, the ‘Analytic’ option is usually the best choice for both analytical and holistic rubrics. The Holistic type only has one criterion in Brightspace, so it's not as useful. Later in this article, you'll find videos about the different Rubric Types.

4. Under scoring, you can choose:

No Score if you do not want to use points in the rubric
Points if you want to give each criterion the same number of points
Custom points if some criteria have a different weighting

Adjust the order of the columns if desired. By default, Brightspace displays the column for the highest score on the left. Click Reverse level order to change this order.
Change the level descriptions.
You can delete a level using the trash can icon.
Use the plus icons to the left and right of the levels to add a new level.
Add a (detailed) description for each criterion.
Fill in descriptions and points for each level.
On the right-hand side, you can see the number of points a student can earn.
By filling in Initial feedback, you can give assessors a kind of ‘starting point’ that they will see during the assessment and can adjust for each student.
If you use this feature, make sure that the option ‘Include rubric in overall feedback’ remains unchecked.
Via the action menu (three dots) next to the criterion name, you can copy (Copy Row) or delete (Delete Row) a criterion. When copying, the new criterion is added directly below the original criterion with the criterion name Copy of [name of the original criterion].
Via Add Criteria Group, you can add one or more criteria groups. Do this, for example, to distinguish between substantive and conditional criteria, or to distinguish between criteria from different areas of expertise or assignment components.

If you have multiple Criteria Groups, you can give each criteria group a name and change their order using the arrows next to the name.

Although a rubric is set to Published, students cannot see the rubric. This depends on the Rubric Visibility and whether a rubric is linked to an assignment / discussion. So don't worry about the Published status.

All changes are automatically saved as you go.

Set the Overall Score

The Overall Score can be confusing. This indicator is intended to indicate the level a student has achieved based on the score in the rubric. The teacher can select a different overall score when assessing, but this will not be transferred to the student's Total Score or Overall Grade.

The overall score can consist of more levels than the rubric, but also fewer.

If this Overall Score causes too much confusion, we recommend creating a single column with 0 points and a dash as text or ‘see Grades’ to refer the student to the Grades overview for the grade.

The Overall Score is also not intended to convert the score to a final score. This is done by means of a Grade Scheme.

If you still want to use the Overall Score with different performance levels (as above), set it (approximately) as follows:

For each level, enter how many points a student must achieve to meet that level.
Add levels using the plus icon or remove them using the trash can icon.
If necessary, provide a general description of the performance that corresponds to each level.

Set visibility and other options of the rubric

Finally, you can set the Options for a rubric, but in most cases these are already correct. Click on the arrow behind ‘Options’ to view and change them if necessary.
Indicate here whether students can see the rubric:

Rubric is visible to students: students can always view the rubric via the Assignment or Discussion to which it is linked, even before it has been assessed. They will only see the assessment itself after it has been published.
Rubric is hidden from students: students cannot see the rubric.
- Include rubric in overall feedback: when this option is selected, students will see their score on the various criteria in addition to their grade, but not the rubric itself. For example: Questioning - The question is clearly formulated, but slightly too broad.
Rubric is hidden from students until feedback is published: students can only see the rubric when feedback has been published for a linked activity.

Select Hide Scores from students if you do not want students to see the scores for each of the criteria.
You can add a short description to the rubric.
Click Close to close the rubric and return to the rubric home page.

Edit a Rubric

You can make textual adjustments to a Rubric, even if it is already in use.

Navigate to Course Tools and click on Rubrics
Click the arrow next to the Rubric you want to edit
Click Edit Options

Once you've edited the text, the rubric saves automatically if you click anywhere other than in the typing field.

Once a rubric has been used for assessment in a module, only the text can be edited within the module. The scores or number of columns can no longer be changed.