The Online Learning Support Team at CIRT regularly reviews Canvas updates and feature options in order to assist UNF faculty in staying current with the functionality of the ever-evolving platform. Recently, the OLS Team made recommendations that several feature options related to grading be enabled by default for all courses. If you do a hefty amount of assignment grading in Canvas, consider using these options to help streamline your approach while enhancing the impartiality of your grading process.
🙈 Anonymous Instructor Annotations
When creating an assignment, you can enable anonymous instructor annotations in DocViewer supported submissions (click here to see all the supported filetypes).
When students view a submission with anonymous instructor annotations in DocViewer, comments do not display an instructor’s name.
THINGS TO NOTE:
- This option only affects comments added in DocViewer in the SpeedGrader submission window. Comments added in the Speedgrader sidebar are not anonymous.
- If you select this checkbox after student submissions are received, any annotations already made in DocViewer will not be anonymous. Ensure this checkbox is selected before allowing students to submit assignments.
💯 Anonymous Grading
When creating an assignment, you can choose to set up an assignment with anonymous grading. Selecting the anonymous grading option hides student names from graders when they view assignment submissions in SpeedGrader.
THINGS TO NOTE:
- Anonymous assignments automatically default to a manual posting policy.
- Grades for anonymous assignments, like other manual post-policy assignments, are not displayed to students until assignment grades are posted.
- Posting grades for an anonymous assignment will remove anonymity from the assignment.
👨📝👵 Moderated Grading
When creating an assignment, you can choose to set up an assignment with moderated grading. Moderated grading allows multiple reviewers to grade a students work and create draft or provisional grades for an assignment. For instance, you may want to allow two TAs in your course to grade all assignments, and you can review their assessments before determining the final grade. This feature can also be used to create a sampling of students for assignment review to ensure grading is consistent and allows secondary grade reviews.
THINGS TO NOTE:
- Moderated assignments are automatically hidden in the Gradebook until grades are posted.
- Moderated assignments are not supported with Peer Review assignments.
Make Canvas Features Work for You
These feature options are among the many tools available in Canvas that are designed with instructors in mind. What’s more, they can be used in conjunction to allow for a richer, more equitable grading experience. As always, CIRT is available to consult with you on these or any other Canvas features as you are ready to dive deeper into all that Canvas has to offer.
