[SpeedGrader] A better way to give individual grades in Group Assignments

[elliott]

USE CASE: I do a lot of small “group” exercises in the classroom.  I need the ability to grade the submissions as a group (which is there), but I also need the ability to provide individual grades (to students who were absent, etc.)  That functionality is also kind of there.  But as it stands now, I have to grade, then edit the Assignment to allow for individual grades. 

If I try to override a single student's grade in the Gradebook, it assigns that grade to everyone on the team.  There's no way that I have found to give an individual score to a student without editing the Assignment.

But then the Assignment has to stay that way for the rest of the semester.  The problem is that when I copy one course into another, I have to go into each individual assignment and make sure the Individual Grade option is turned off.

Also: when I separate it out into individual scores I THINK it removes the non-submitting team members’ ability to view the submission.  (I haven't found a way to really test this other than having a student show me their interface.  I cannot add "Test Student" into a Group.)

IDEA: It would be great if the SpeedGrader or Gradebook interface could allow me to enter a default grade for the team, but then show a list of team members who I can assign an individual grade to while in SpeedGrader.  That way the assignment stays the same (no editing) but I can assign different grades to individuals (overriding their team grade) in real time.  Or something like that.

[hoggardr]

Problem statement:

I have asked for this before and still nothing done about it. Grading group work in Speed Grader is a MAJOR hassle if everyone in the group has not participated equally.

Here is an example: I have groups of 5 students. In one particular group, 4 students participated and 1 student didn't. I want to use Speed Grader to send the same grade and grading comments to the 4 members who worked on the project, but give a grade of 0 to the person who didn't.

Currently, here are the ridiculous number of steps that I have to follow to accomplish this:

1. Make sure that the assignment settings are such that "assign grades to each student individually" IS NOT checked
2. Open Speed Grader and go to the group that I want to grade
3. Assign the grade, and write comments, for the 4 group members who worked (note that Canvas will issue this to ALL 5 members)
4. Close Speed Grader
5. Go back to Edit the assignment
6. Change the settings so that "assign grades to each student individually" IS checked
7. Save the settings
8. Go back to Speed Grader and find the 1 student who didn't work
9. Change the grade to 0, and add any individual comments to this person about not participating (note that I cannot delete the comments given to the other 4 group members at this point because it will delete the comments for the entire group).
10. Close Speed Grader
11. Go back to Edit the assignment
12. Change the settings so that "assign grades to each student individually" IS NOT checked
13. Save the settings
14. Go back to Speed Grader and continue grading the rest of the groups If I encounter another group which has a non-participating student, I have to go back and repeat all of those steps yet again.

This is absolutely ridiculous!

Proposed solution:

In the group speed grading window (the one you see when "assign grades to each student individually" IS NOT checked), it should have a check box which says "assign grades to all group members" which is checked by default (i.e. giving the same functionality that Canvas currently has). If this check box is UNCHECKED, then it should pop up a list of the group members with a check box beside each one, where all of these are also checked by default. In this list, I could uncheck the group members who should not receive the group grade and group comments. Once I have finished grading all of the groups, I can easily (ONE TIME) change the assignment settings to assign grades to each student individually, and then go back to speed grader to assign grades to the individual students who were not graded as part of the group.

User role(s):

instructor