Hi @hmacdermott - In my humble opinion the course opt-in feature is the way to go. With the option to hide student names in SpeedGrader, it did not take faculty at my own institution very long to realize that while the order of the names in the drop-down menu would be randomized, the student numbers (Student 1, Student 2, etc.) are not. In other words, Student 1 will be the first student alphabetically in your class, Student 2 the second student alphabetically, etc. While faculty made do while that was the only option available, the introduction of creating assignments with anonymous grading was much more popular among the faculty who wanted truly anonymous grading. I remember testing this, specifically, when it was released, and the student numbers are indeed completely random in all cases. John Adams could well be Student 14 and George Washington could well be Student 1.
Hope this helps, Helen.
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