I have two students in the same section with the same name (but different emails, university IDs, etc.). How can I tell which is which when I am in the Speedgrader?
I have two students in the same section with the same name (but different emails, university IDs, etc.). How can I tell which is which when I am in the Speedgrader?
Beck, that sounds super confusing! Honestly the only way I can think of to know which is which in Speedgrader is to check the gradebook and see which student is listed first. Then in Speedgrader make sure submissions are provided in alphabetical order. Something else you could do is ask Canvas Support at your school to see if they could add a middle initial or something like that to the student’s names in Canvas.
Hope this helps!
The names are identical so alphabetical order does not distinguish them. Are you able to guarantee me that the EXACT SAME sorting mechanism is used in both the Gradebook AND the Speedgrade so two people who have the exact same name will always get sorted in the SAME order within the Speedgrader? Or does it depend on what I (or Canvas) may have done in the meantime, like sort my Gradebook by exam score?
I already have one example where the Gradebook and the Speedgrader handle things completely differently (the Gradebook lists students in "last, first" order - because I had to specially request it to - but the Speedgrader always gives the student names in "first last" order even when they are alphabetized by last name -- which is extremely annoying and makes it even more difficult to find individual students in the Speedgrader, which apparently is incapable of having a search feature added to it).
This (the inability to distinguish students) would seem to be a gigantic BUG in the Speedgrader. Maybe CANVAS could FIX IT by having additional information displayed in the Speedgrader besides the student's name.
Beck, for a case like this I recommend contacting Canvas Support at your school. They will be able to do some testing in your specific Canvas environment - that I don’t have access to - that should be able to answer these questions. They might also, as indicated before, decide its easier to add a middle initial for each student.
And for those international students who don't have middle names (and make up a significant portion of my classes)?
How about Canvas fix this MAJOR DESIGN FLAW that doesn't acknowledge that there may be more than two people with the SAME NAME?
How about we pass an international law that requires parents to look up the proposed names of their children to make sure that it's not already taken by someone else? Then, before anyone can change their name later in life -- whether by marriage or other legal means -- they much check the registry and if someone else already has the new combination. If the new name is already taken, then the marriage must not be allowed to proceed. Those who violate the rule will be banished to a deserted island where there will never be a chance of name conflict with another human.
That's not a serious proposal. It's intended to demonstrate the problem of taking something that was never intended to be unique and use it as a unique identifier.
Canvas has acknowledged that there may be two people with the same name. They give everyone a unique immutable numeric ID. The problem is that's not human-friendly.
If two people have the same name, then you need to display some uniquely identifiable information about them to tell them apart. However, for most of the people in your class, that extra information is neither wanted nor useful and consumes valuable space. If you want to add the login or email to the list in SpeedGrader then there is no room for the person's name -- either that or the dropdown box becomes very wide. Email addresses are not necessarily unique, nor may they help in identifying a person (who is BadgerFan2001@example.com) other than it would hopefully be different from the other person with the same name, and email addresses can change over time.
There is a SIS code, but not every institution uses SIS codes. And what does it benefit to have a number like 295157 next to a student's name? -- nothing unless the names are the same.
Secondary IDs (logins) are probably the closest that you'll come up with to an ideal solution. That's already what is displayed on the gradebook page next to their name, so it would make it easy to check.
If displaying it in the pull down list is going to be problematic, then you might be able to include extra information about the student in SpeedGrader whenever a page is loaded. There was a discussion and feature idea about doing this for group assignments so you would know who was in each group here: View student names in Group assignments (in Spe... | Canvas Community
Regardless, that's not available right now, though, so here is something that you can do right now while you try to grade and struggle with knowing which student is which.
Use the Canvas User ID. Thankfully it is pretty easy to find in most places in Canvas and it is unique.
When in Speedgrader, you can look at the URL to tell the Canvas ID of the student. It ends in something like this:
Thankfully that is not shown until you actually pick the student. I say thankfully because it could be an accessibility nightmare to rely on mouseover affects. In other words, you won't be able to see that until you actually pick the student. So, if there are two Tom Browns, you might get the wrong one the first time, but perhaps they both need graded so it's not so bad?
On the people page or in the gradebook or in about anywhere else in Canvas that has a student's name, you can mouse over it and see their Canvas ID. This is what I get when I mouse over the student's name on my People page.
On a piece of a paper that you keep handy when you're grading, or in an electronic document that you pull up when you grade, you identify ID belongs to which student. You can add things like their email addresses (if they're unique) or their SIS IDs (if available) as well. You'll need some way of figuring it out because their names are not unique.
Then you can tell the students apart in SpeedGrader, in the gradebook, or on the People page.
Is it perfect? No, but it will allow you to get any grading done right now.
Another way to handle the problem right now is to start with the gradebook. Find the two students with the same name and use the secondary ID to distinguish them. Open the SpeedGrader from that student's assignment. Once you've identified the first student, you can go ahead and grade everyone else in SpeedGrader and when you get to the other student with the same name, it was the other one.
I know the gradebook doesn't work well with large classes. Hopefully the new gradebook will address some of those issues.
There is actually a compounding factor at my institution: my institution allows students to set their "preferred name" and it is this preferred name that shows up in all the rosters as well as the information imported into Canvas. So, I can have Elisabeth Taylor, Eliza Taylor, and Burgundy Elisabeth Taylor all in my class and they can all set their preferred name to "Liz" and now I have three Liz Taylor's in my Gradebook (and Speedgrader). In the Gradebook I can tell these students apart by their email addresses, which is something my institution has added to the Canvas Gradebook (but is not accessible in the Speedgrader).
The solution, I hope, would NOT be to stop using preferred names in the rosters/Canvas Gradebook; I think that the ability to be known and called by your name is extremely important, and in some cases a safety issue (the preferred name policy means that a transgender student doesn't have to out themself to everyone who has access to a class list just because they have not - or cannot - legally change their name).
I'd like to refer you to SIS ID column in Gradebook, where you'll see it is possible for there to be a secondary ID that can be enabled in the gradebook. Also, you may want to encourage your students to add a profile picture. This will help with differentiating two 'same name' students, as well.
The link you provided says the info will be rolled out "sometime in 2018". Any idea when that actually will be?
Also, will this information be available in the Speedgrader? My institution does already show a "Secondary ID" in the Gradebook that I can use to distinguish students in the Gradebook. But the Speedgrader ONLY shows first and last name.
I ran into this (or at least a similar) situation when creating groups. Two students with identical names in the list and I specifically wanted them in certain groups and couldn't distinguish between them -- and Groups doesn't list SIS information or email etc.
We did, too, Cynthia Hollingsworth! I distinctly remember this occurring a few years ago with an instructor dividing students into groups, and this is a scenario where even an avatar image won't help. We are a smaller institution with relatively smaller class sizes that rarely exceed 30, so the instructor and I had a bit of a chuckle over it, but I can see where this would be a BIG issue at larger institutions. I'm surprised there have not been more complaints about this over the years.
I think part of the reason that there are not more complaints is that, at least the case of all my colleagues in the CS department, they've given up on trying to get Canvas to listen to the issues affecting large enrollment classes. I am the only one still willing to engage with these forums and the "help" available on campus.
Hello Beck Hasti (from about an hour away from you...in Fond du Lac, WI)...
Maybe this is a silly question...but I am wondering if UW-Madison allows students to upload their own photo (avatar) to their Canvas profile? If so, that would help you visually identify both students even though they have the same name, right? The student photos show up in the Gradebook and in the Speedgrader. That thought occurred to me this afternoon...and I was thinking this would be an alternative to not having to look up a student ID number or anything like that. Just a thought, I guess...
Wow, those avatars are tiny (and certainly of no use in trying to actually identify a student) but I suppose I could contact students with the same name and ask them to upload avatars that have different background colors or something.
Or, you know, Canvas could do something about the fact that names are not unique identifiers...
Beck Hasti...
Not much smaller than the avatars that appear next to our postings here in the Canvas Community. In our Canvas instance, we added some JavaScript code (found somewhere on GitHub) to our global JS file so that, in the "People" area of a course, users can click on a button which will enlarge the avatar photos, and you can also click an additional link to hide names (if you wanted to try and learn the names of your students by just looking at the photos). This only works in the "People" tab...not other areas of a Canvas course.
While I don't think there's any problem with the size of avatars in posts in the Canvas Community, I would never be able to use one of the avatars I see next to a post to be able to identify someone I didn't already know in real life (and with 200+ people in each of my lectures, I can't even see the students at the back of the class clearly when I teach).
Provided students did what you did and used cartoon-like images as their avatar or used different background colors, I would be able to use the general impression of an avatar as a distinguisher, but if the students used, say, the photo from their student ID, it would not be very helpful in distinguishing students with the same name.
It seems to me that Beck's original question remains unanswered. As I understand it, SpeedGrader currently lacks a reliable method for quickly disambiguating identically named students. That does seem to be a design flaw and I can see how it would be frustrating for instructors in your position. Beck--if you haven't already submitted this as a 'Canvas Feature Request' through our local process (the last link that appears when you click the help button in UW's instance of Canvas), that'd be my recommendation. And/or creating it as an idea on the larger Canvas community and hoping it gets enough up votes for Instructure to want to tackle it in their future development.
I have already submitted a feature request through the local UW process (and have yet to hear back even if it was received).
I submitted a feature idea similar to this to the main Canvas site over a year ago and it has been moved to Cold Storage.
There is also this feature request Display Default Email in Gradebook and Speedgrader that gets at this problem as well. It was created in October 2016.
I concur. I ran into a similar "problem," if you wish to call it that, where I began confusing one student with another due to a change in one student's preferred name and a change in two students' avatars. After consulting with my Dean, the resolution -- which I find totally dissatisfying -- is to grade and score all students blind. Yup, as if they are numbers ... random numbers, no less.
Why I find this less than satisfying is that engaging students, by name, in assignment comments, is how I built a personal connection with students in an online experience that many students find to be impersonal. It also allowed me follow-up individually, or comment on improvement ... or developing problems. The only way in which a student identifies themselves in this scenario is commenting on the assignment or putting their name in a document.
Many of us have to find ways to deal with issues such as this ... like the one class in which I had 2 Brittanys, a Britney and another who preferred Britt ... 1 in 10 students. That was on-the-ground, though. Online is a very different medium, and it's even more difficult when the names and identifiers (avatars) can change.
So, for now, I score "Student 43," "Student 44," and so on...
Students ID number should be added to SpeedGrader instead of the student name, and it should be linked to each and every student name for everything. That would make life easier for everyone. It's a unique number for a reason.
Beck Hasti, I also had two students with the same name last semester. I agree that it would be helpful to have some way of dis-ambiguating students in the Speed Grader. Meanwhile, here are some work-arounds:
So... these aren't ideal, but should work for now, until your Feature Request is answered.
Will the Feature Request get answered? I have no reason at this point to expect that.
I have a class of 500+ students with (hopefully) 9 TAs. This is not something I personally have to deal with, since I cannot hand-grade more than 500 submissions of multiple assignments/exams myself but something my TAs have to deal with. For any given assignment, students may submit their work electronically or on paper. Students already include their full name on their work (which may or may not be the name listed in Canvas). I stopped asking them to include their ID, since there is no ID field in Canvas' gradebook that I can use to match up with a name (and then I also have to figure out how to confidentially shred everything with an ID on it after I have held on to it for the legally-required length of time). I now ask them to include their school email since that IS unique and IS in the Canvas gradebook at my university (although not accessible via the Speedgrader).
All feedback is given via Canvas (using the SpeedGrader and in-house tools developed by many people over many years). Grading blindly is not an option here with both paper and electronic submissions. Keeping a separate file with icons disambiguating students with the same name so all of my TAs can tell which students are which (since folks also don't always put the name Canvas calls them on their papers) is something I can do (after making sure that all my TAs are able to disambiguate the profile pictures the students submit), and it will mean a separate file to put somewhere where my TAs can have easy access to it which is yet another file they have to have pulled up as they spend hours and hours grading students.
My TAs are almost always brand-new graduate students who have never graded another person's work much less had to interact in this way with an LMS. For many of them, English is not their native language. They have never heard of FERPA before. They are full-time grad students with a part-time job (being a TA) for which I (and they) would much rather have them spend time in activities that directly support student-learning outcomes (and I would much rather spend time on activities that directly support student-learning outcomes). They have repeatedly expressed how clunky, slow, and difficult Canvas is for them to use.
Since Canvas is going to assume this has been answered otherwise, I will summarize my findings:
Answer: You can't.
Since Canvas is going to assume this has been answered otherwise, I will summarize my findings:
Answer: You can't.