Anonymously Graded Assignments Retain Anonymity after Posting Grades

[lindalee]

Hi folks,

We've had several reports of something unexpected with anonymously graded assignments in New Gradebook. When grades are posted in New Gradebook, the assignment continues to hide grades in the gradebook and student names in SpeedGrader. Students, as expected, can see their grades after posting. Has anyone else seen this issue?

With anonymous grading, anonymity is in place during the grading process. SpeedGrader shows “Student 1,” “student 2,” etc. And the gradebook completely grays out the column. This changes when either anonymous grading is removed from the assignment, or when grades are unmuted in old gradebook or posted (for everyone, the only option) in New Gradebook.

We opened a case yesterday with Instructure support (case 04746925), and the L2 who responded to our case last night suggested that this is the expected behavior:

I would like to confirm on this case that you are looking to have the anonymity removed when grades are posted is this correct? Because the assignment is set up to be anonymous to graders it will remain this way as long as this setting is still enabled in the assignment settings.

However, this is not the behavior that we've seen in the past, nor is it what is explained in the documentation for anonymous grading or New Gradebook:

For anonymous grading (How do I add an assignment that includes anonymous grading?😞

• Unmuting or posting grades for an anonymous assignment will remove anonymity from the assignment.

For New Gradebook (How do I post grades for an assignment in the New Gradebook?😞

• Posting grades for an anonymous assignment will remove anonymity from the assignment.

Has anyone else seen this issue? If it is, in fact, the intended behavior, does anyone know when this change went into effect?

Thanks!

[Robbie_Grant]

 @lindalee ,

First, I want to apologize for your question sitting in the community for so long without a response.

Second, it looks like you have stumped the Canvas Community.  Were you able to find an answer to your question? I am going to go ahead and mark this question as answered because there hasn't been any more activity in a while, so I assume that you have the information that you need. If you still have a question about this or if you have information that you would like to share with the community, by all means, please do come back and leave a comment.

How we keep your questions flowing!‌

Robbie

[lindalee · Accepted solution]

Hi Robbie Grant Admin,

Thanks for the follow up!

We did get a response from Instructure Support about this issue:

What I am seeing is these assignments were created or imported from an older course that at one time had the old gradebook enabled. With the updates to the new Post Policies function older assignments that had at one time been muted as is the case for anonymous assignments are not fully updating when grades are posted and the muted attribute is remaining true instead of turning off. This has been corrected for future created assignments and the Muted attribute is being deprecated in the future so this issue will not present itself on future assignments.

To resolve the behavior on these current assignments experiencing this behavior the Muted attribute can be updated in the API from a true to false status.

Thanks again!

Best,

Linda