For educators, rubrics have become a familiar tool to help clarify expectations, support consistent grading, and give students a sense of what successful work should look like. However, there is a downside to making a rubric, exemplar, or step-by-step checklist the starting point for every assignment: students can become very good at following directions without becoming very good at figuring things out.
As schools place greater emphasis on creativity, problem-solving, collaboration, innovation, and AI literacy, educators may want to reconsider how much structure they provide upfront. Technology makes it easier than ever to generate polished work that checks every box. The more predictable the assignment, the easier it can be to optimize for completion whether the optimizer is a student, a search engine, or an AI tool.
This doesn't mean abandoning rubrics, but we have to be more intentional about when we use one. For many years, I have intentionally not provided rubrics for many of my leadership courses, as leaders are rarely given a clear checklist of how to complete a task in the real world.
Sometimes, the most valuable assignment is the one in which students are not entirely sure what the finished product should look like. I understand students do not like that ambiguity, but it mirrors the real world into which they will graduate.
Here are ten reasons to consider putting the rubric away and improve learning outcomes in the process.
1. Creativity Needs Room to Breathe
Give students a template, and many will use it. Give them an exemplar, and many will imitate it. Give them a detailed rubric, and many will work backward from the criteria. None of those behaviors are inherently bad but can limit the creative process.
When students have room to decide what a product should look like, how it should be organized, or which approach might work best, they must make creative decisions rather than simply execute someone else's. If we want to nurture creativity and innovation, we need to give them something to be creative about.
2. The Real World Rarely Provides Rubrics
Consider what happens after students leave school: A sales manager may be told to increase customer engagement; a teacher may be asked to improve student participation; a designer may be asked to solve a user problem; an entrepreneur may recognize an unmet need. Where is the rubric for any of these?
Professionals are expected to determine what success looks like, identify the constraints, develop an approach, test their ideas, and adjust along the way. Students should receive assignments that provide opportunities to build those skills before they enter the workplace.
3. Exemplars Can Become Templates
Showing students an example seems like an obvious way to help them understand an assignment. However, in my experience, it becomes a stencil for the students to copy. Instead of asking, "What could I create?" students ask, "How can I make mine look like that?" This is particularly noticeable with presentations, multimedia projects, websites, videos, and other creative products. Give a class one strong example, and you may end up with 25 slightly different versions of the same idea.
Consider providing fewer examples and guidance to encourage and generate more possibilities and results.
4. Students Need to Experience Productive Uncertainty
Learning isn't always comfortable, and there is value in giving students a challenge and allowing them to sit with the question: How am I going to approach this?
Allowing for uncertainty can lead to brainstorming, research, experimentation, questions, failure, feedback, and revision. These are not obstacles to learning but key to building critical thinking skills. If every assignment comes with a prescribed sequence of steps, students have fewer opportunities to develop the confidence to navigate an unfamiliar problem.
5. A Rubric Can Turn Learning into Point Hunting
We've all heard students ask questions such as, "How many points is this worth?” "Do I have to do this part?" or "Is this on the rubric?" Those questions are often evidence that students have learned how the system works.
By not providing a detailed rubric with specified requirements, students are more likely to ask, "How can I make this better?" instead of "Have I done everything I need to get full credit?" Those are different learning experiences.
6. AI Changes the Equation
Generative AI has made this conversation even more important. A well-crafted prompt containing the assignment directions, grading criteria, format, and desired characteristics, can produce a response designed to satisfy those requirements.
Educators should consider whether some assignments are overly optimized for compliance, and look to improve their overall approach to boost critical thinking and other skills. Many of our students can comply with instructor expectations, but that does not mean they are learning the critical thinking skills they will need to be successful.
7. Students Can Learn to Define Quality
What if students didn't always receive the definition of a "good" product before they began?
After students explore a problem or create an initial draft, teachers can ask: “What makes this effective?” Students can analyze their own work, examine different approaches, provide peer feedback, and identify characteristics of quality. The resulting criteria can become more meaningful because students helped discover what’s needed for success.
In this model, the rubric isn't the recipe for learning but a reflection of what students learned about quality. This reflection process will become more important as instructors and students optimize AI tools to support their learning.
8. Open-Ended Assignments Encourage Better Questions
A tightly structured assignment tends to produce tightly structured questions. Requiring an open-ended approach requires students to think about decisions rather than directions.
In a world where information is increasingly easy to access, knowing what questions to ask may be more valuable than knowing how to follow a predetermined process.
9. Teachers Get a Better Look at Student Thinking
Another benefit to removing some of the scaffolding is that teachers may learn more about how students think.
By allowing students to determine how to approach a task, their choices become evidence. One student may create a video. Another may develop an interactive presentation. A third may write an article. A fourth may devise an approach the teacher never anticipated. Those differences can reveal strengths, misconceptions, interests, and problem-solving strategies that a highly structured assignment might never expose.
10. Independence Is the Ultimate Goal
Perhaps the strongest argument for occasionally removing the rubric is simple: we want students to become independent learners. Eventually, students will encounter problems for which no teacher has provided a checklist. They will have to figure out what matters, determine where to begin, seek help when necessary, make decisions, evaluate their own work, and revise.
Students do not become independent by always being given the next step, but by practicing what to do when nobody gives them the next step. Taking off the “training wheels” of a rubric can give students the confidence and encourage them to ride off on their own!
Flipping The Rubric Script
This is not an argument against rubrics, which have an important place in education. Rubrics can make expectations clearer, support equitable assessment, help students understand feedback, and provide valuable structure, particularly when students are learning a new skill or when specific standards must be demonstrated.
Consider occasionally flipping the rubric script by starting with a compelling question or authentic problem. Let students brainstorm possibilities and give them time to develop an approach. Allow them to struggle productively. Have them share drafts and provide feedback. Then, once students have a better understanding of the task, introduce or co-create criteria for quality.
In this process, the rubric becomes something students use to evaluate and improve their thinking, rather than a checklist they use to avoid thinking.
