Enhanced Rubrics | Product Overview

Anna Lindsay

Release Timing: Generally Available on March 21 as a Feature Option. Enabled by default and can be disabled by account admin. Enforcement planned for December 19, 2026. 
Regional Availability: Globally Support
Customer Type: All customer types
Available with: Canvas

Key Takeaway: Enhanced Rubrics allows educators to spend less time on the administrative tasks of rubric creation and management, and more time on teaching  – thanks to an improved creation process with drag and drop functionality and better visibility into where rubrics are being used. Other updates include:

• Two new rubric preview options that reduce scrolling during the grading process
• Rubric import and export capabilities
• Draft and archived states

We know that rubrics are a key educator tool for grading and sharing student feedback. The classic rubric functionality in Canvas left a lot to be desired and lacked a scalable foundation for future functionality and innovation. 

Enhanced Rubrics not only offers Canvas users immediate value, but unlocks further enhancements like self-assessment, multiple rubrics, and IgniteAI Generator for Rubrics, making it the foundation for all upcoming rubric innovations in Canvas.

How to Enable: “Enhanced Rubrics” feature option

• Now through March 21, 2026: Enhanced Rubrics is off by default and available as an opt-in feature. Administrators must enable the feature option to make it available.
• March 21 – December 19, 2026: Enhanced Rubrics is on by default, with the option for administrators to opt out if needed.
  • Institutions that prefer not to adopt at this time may disable the feature option within their account.
  • Early opt-out requests can be submitted by March 19, 2026. This will prevent the feature from being enabled in your instance during the March 21 release. 
• After December 19, 2026: Enhanced Rubrics becomes the default Canvas rubrics experience and will no longer be optional.

Video Walkthrough:

https://productmarketing.instructuremedia.com/embed/31017a27-4ffb-4141-821f-2c8846792ca3

Shareable Link

Resources:

Release Notes - March 21, 2026

Change Logs

Instructure Enforcements, Deprecations, and Breaking Changes

FAQ

Blog Post

User Guides

TrentMcMahon

Hello Anna,

When on the product roadmap for Enhanced Rubrics will the new UX also appear for discussion rubrics? Right now, my biggest issue regarding the push for adopting this new feature is that the UX between assignment types is different. For example, we rely heavily on the use of point-based rubrics with ranges, as I am sure many others do. It will be confusing for students (and me) to see the points displayed in one direction with decimals in enhanced rubrics (8.1 to 10 pts) and the opposite direction with a greater than symbol in others (10 to <8.0 pts).

Separately, this would be a great opportunity for Instructure to move discussion rubrics out of the sandwich menu in discussions and have the option to expand it appear more in-line with the discussion itself. This has been an issue with the discussion rubrics for years. Thank you!