Grades is a tool that helps instructors view and enter grades for students. It offers functionality similar to that of a spreadsheet application and makes it possible to keep all marking in one place in the Canvas course. For users with the Teacher or Course Administrator role in Canvas, clicking Grades on the course menu will display the course gradebook. This lists all students in the course (in rows) and all graded assignments in columns.

SpeedGrader is an internal application provided by Canvas, to help mark student work. It allows you to written, audio and video feedback, as well as annotating the student submission.

Recommended formative use at Oxford: University policy does not allow the use of Canvas for summative submissions or marking. SpeedGrader is a great way to give detailed and consistent feedback on formative assignments in Canvas. When creating an assignment for formative assessment, the tutor should allow multiple submissions, assess the submissions using SpeedGrader, and provide feedback. Where advisable, you could then request a re-submission from particular students (which should comply with both the submission period and the number of allowable attempts).

See further information below about Reassigning an assignment to allow students to improve their work.

Any teachers or teaching assistants placed in Sections will see only their allocated students in Gradebook (for any Assignments where Sections have been used). We advise speaking with a learning technologist if you are interested in dividing formative marking duties in this way.

Canvas guides for more information and videos:

1. Introduction

Although ordinarily used to keep track of summative submissions and feedback, the Gradebook and SpeedGrader can be used to provide detailed, precise, and personal feedback on formative work. All non-graded assessment in Canvas will show up in the Gradebook, and from here you can access SpeedGrader in order to leave formative feedback. SpeedGrader can also be directly accessed from Assignments.

Note that:

Anything graded in SpeedGrader is automatically recorded in the Gradebook.
In the Gradebook, you can set the Grade Posting Policy, and specify whether grades should be automatically released to students (Automatically post grades), or if you would prefer to release all the grades at the same time (Manually post grades). This can be done for the Gradebook as a whole (click on the 'cog' icon), or for an individual assignment (click on the three dots alongside the assignment title).

SpeedGrader can be used to:

Sort formative submissions by students and hide student names for the administering of anonymous feedback.
Quickly and efficiently leave written, audio or video feedback for students.
Track formative marking progress and hide assignments whilst giving feedback.

2. Annotating student submissions

Canvas DocViewer is the tool that works with Speedgrader to allow annotations on submissions in Canvas. With DocViewer you can add point, highlight, text, strikeout, draw and area annotations. To find out more about these individual features within DocViewer, visit the Canvas help page for leaving annotated comments in student submissions.

3. Accessing SpeedGrader

To access SpeedGrader, click Assignments from the relevant Course Navigation menu, then click the name of the assignment. From here you can click directly into SpeedGrader by navigating to the Related Items area and selecting SpeedGrader from the list. Within SpeedGrader you should then use the student list to locate a particular student submission to give feedback.

Quick links to access SpeedGrader are available from the Options ('three dots') menu within the following tools: Assignments, Graded Discussions, Modules, Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes:

View this quick video demonstration on how to access SpeedGrader from the Options menu in multiple tools.

4. Anonymising student names

If you want student submissions to remain anonymous, open SpeedGrader, click the Settings icon [1] and then select Options [2].

Now select the Hide student names in the SpeedGrader checkbox and click the blue Save Settings button to finish.

Student names should now be hidden.

5. Reassigning an assignment to a student

As a tutor, after you have provided a comment on an individual student submission in SpeedGrader, you can reassign it to the student and ask them to improve their work and redo their submission. You need to first provide feedback, which will enable the Reassign Assignment button.

This places the assignment back in the student’s List View as another assignment to complete, but does not change the original due date – that is, the student will only see the Re-submit Assignment button if it is still within the original submission time period. Note that you may also need to adjust the allowable number of submissions in the Assignments tool (if it was originally only 1), to enable the student to resubmit before the due date.

6. Using a comment library

You will probably find that there are some comments that you often make to students. These can be added to your Comment Library and saved for reuse across multiple students and assignments. Click on the comment bubble. The Manage Comment Library panel will appear, allowing you to write a new comment and add it to your library (there is a facility to turn on/off suggestions while typing):