[SpeedGrader] Ability to move through all assignments for one student in speedgrader

As I am looking at the speedgrader assignments, one feature that would be great would be that instead of per assignment, moving from student to student, but by student, moving from assignment to assignment. I am probably not the only one who has thought of a need to pick one student and then review their first assignment, second, third, etc. as teachers do that sometimes when they have to create a final grade. Right now, I have to back up each time to speedgrader to pick the next assignment and reopen speedgrader again.
136 Comments
bcassidy
Community Novice

This feature would be great to quickly review a student's work with them for a grading term. As well as updating grades for a chunk of assignments for one student. Please make this a feature.

ethan_greene
Community Member

I would hope that this idea could be implemented not just for one student, but for an entire class - so instead of having to switch between students AND assignments, I could simply grade (all) assignments from any student in the order they were received, especially when we have moved to online instruction where I get one to two assignments a day from assignments earlier in our marking period.  I'd love to prioritize students who got their work in last week rather than the one who submitted an earlier assignment. 

So if this could be not just "one student" (which I think would definitely be helpful!) but all students, with one student as an option - that would be optimal!  

It might actually be cool, too, using the grading on the mobile teacher app to flip through.  Give my mind a break from grading essay after essay.  

hank7932
Community Novice

Whenever I teach a course that involves grading drafts of papers, I need to be able to flip between drafts to truly understand a student's progress. This feature would greatly improve my ability to do this type of grading. Like others, I have been opening multiple browser tabs to allow me to have multiple assignments open for a single student. This is highly inefficient.

dseman
Community Novice

This is a GREAT idea!!! Yet, the voting has been going on for 5 years. Is this even something you are still considering? If so, how long does it actually take you to add new features? I am shocked and honestly, quite disappointed by the fact that this feature has been considered for 5 years and nobody on the Canvas design team has done something about it. If I had the choice, I would NEVER use this software. It is cumbersome and not intuitive at all. I have used other LMS and most of them are garbage. And not only can I not look at a series of assignments submitted by a single student, but after 5 years of considering this, Canvas hasn't made a single change to this. How disappointing. I would hope you would have a better work-flow than this. But I guess I can't expect much from such a poorly developed LMS. Shame on you, honestly. I am really shocked by this! I know I have said that mulitple times, but seriously, wow....As I said, I am not a big fan of Canvas...this just moves Canvas to the very bottom of the list of LMS's to use. Unfortunately I am not the one who makes these choices. Its a good thing for your company that the teachers don't actually make this decision, because I don't know any teacher that likes using Canvas.

tstuwe
Community Novice

Delanie -- YES! You captured my sentiments beautifully. When Canvas was launched and the entire state of Utah was cast as its first guinea pigs, this functionality (I don't even consider it a feature) was among the first things I noticed missing. The LMS overall sucked, and all the apologists around me frowned at my candor about it. They slowly -- painfully slowly -- added functionality that should have been there at launch, and, as you point out, the hodge-podge, random, lack of big-picture thinking kept it a cumbersome, unintuitive platform to be forced to use. Yes, as you also point out, we are forced to use it. We have no vote. Bureaucrats make the decision and we have to suffer with it. Given that this company was founded by a couple of BYU grads, I have often wondered whether the Utah statewide adoption of such an unspectacular, under-developed product was achieved via some special relationships and/or considerations between parties. The company certainly did absolutely nothing to earn the contract, and their unresponsive demeanor has done nothing to earn this captive end-user's respect.

t_cortooms
Community Member

My current workflow requires that I open multiple speedgrader tabs to access and view multiple assignment submissions by the same student, in order to have a fully-informed discussion with my student and come to a holistic grade.

 

It would be nice if all of this could be done from one tab. If only I could access the same user's submissions from one speedgrader tab. The circle in the image below would be the perfect location for a dropdown, I would imagine.

 

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Thanks!

PS: I can only hope it will be implemented soon....

atreitman
Community Member

Given the current remote environment, when students turn in a bunch of late work at a time it takes me about 30 minutes to scroll through assignments because of loading time, and having to go between devices to make comments... If we still have remote learning next year this features would save teachers SO MANY HOURS OF WASTED TIME!!!

garrett_william
Community Participant

I agree. I would also like to sort through assignments in Speed Grader. It would allow me to work efficiently and not have to open a million tabs to do grading from the to-do list.

351541_Screen Shot 2020-06-23 at 7.01.13 AM.png

garym
Community Member

Yes, please! There is way too much clicking involved in navigating Speedgrader. I would love to be able to move between assignments without exiting Speedgrader. 

ircroft
Community Member

Canvas is such a strong classroom tool that has grown so much except for this intuitive type of navigation.  When a student decides to turn in 5 (sometimes 20) assignments at one time, it takes longer to grade those than it does to grade a single assignment for 90 students. We just need a toggle switch to speedgrader one single assignment for everyone OR every assignment for one student.  Or another set of arrows that navigate from one assignment to the next for a single student.