Student score submitted before "Submit" pressed

[StefanWaner]

Any (possibly preliminary score) entered in the "Score" box when grading a written submission causes the page to automatically submit that score to the grade book if the instructor clicks anywhere else on the same page, without even moving to another student's work, regardless of whether they have pressed "Submit" or not. This is a serious --- and potentially legal -- issue:

It should be up to the instructor grading an assignment to decide when they are ready to submit a score, and not the learning management system.

For instance, if you have typed in a preliminary score, but are not yet ready to submit it, then the score currently in the box should *NOT* automatically trigger a submission upon losing focus 

[james_whalley · Accepted solution]

@StefanWaner I see how this could be frustrating to you. I know that Instructure is in the midst of updating their SpeedGrader, so you could put in a Feature Idea regarding the matter.

As for the current situation, while there is nothing you can do to change how the SpeedGrader works, there are some things that may help. First, the Submit button in the sidebar of the SpeedGrader is for submitting comments entered into the comment box and is not related to saving the grade. If you would like to enter grades into the box and not have them immediately show to the students, you can use a Manual Grade Posting Policy for the course (or individual assignments). This policy requires a Post Grades step in the grading process that is done en masse for all graded submissions of a single assignment or all submissions of a single assignment.

[StefanWaner]

Thanks for the answer. I will put in a feature request suggesting renaming the "Submit" button to say "Submit Comments".

[StefanWaner]

I am unable to submit a "feature request" suggesting renaming the "Submit" button to say "Submit Comments"
as the page to submit feature requests  tells me that I am unauthorized to access it no matter how I try.

So, perhaps you or somebody that is permitted to access the feature requests page could add it for me.

Thanks

Stefan

[StefanWaner]

Hello James

Thank you; sounds like a useful workaround to maintain consistency when grading an entire class, although renaming the "submit" button to say "Submit Comments" would make things clearer.

In addition to entering scores and comments in the "comments" box, I also make frequent annotations directly on students' submitted documents, and I have also noticed that those annotations appear to be automatically saved as soon as I create them as well---again before I press "Submit." Does the student see those as well whether or not I have pressed "Submit?" (While I am grading a specific submission, I often revise the annotated deductions I type in the submitted document as I go through the rest of it, depending on whether these are recurring instances of the same type of error or different types of errors. So I would feel strange if the student could, in effect, monitor my grading as it progresses by looking at their submitted document as I am still working on it.)

[james_whalley]

@StefanWaner I am actually going to put this in as a UX Bug, as we have also had instructors who did not find the Submit button to intuitively mean that it was attached to the comments.