Can't see names in Speedgrader, only email addresses

[ttcedwards]

I find the way Canvas and Speedgrader handle names to be incredibly frustrating. The system can't seem to decide when it wants to show me actual student names, their email addresses, or a long random number that doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything.

For most students, the Grades page and Speedgrader shows only their emails. If I have a stack of assignments on paper to score, I don't HAVE their emails, I have their NAMES. But Speedgrader will not consistently show names - I think it's related to how students signed up in the first place? (ie. Whether they self-enrolled or answered an invitation email.)

Is there any way to ensure that the Grades and the Speedgrader will show me the names of the students?

[chriscas]

Hi @ttcedwards,

Are you using the Free For Teacher version of Canvas, or something your school/institution has setup?  I don't think SpeedGrader itself is the issue, since we don't see behavior like that at my institution, but it's likely as you somewhat suggested the way the user accounts are being created or managed.  If you are using the free Canvas version, I don't think there will be a way to manage this yourself, though you could ask students to visit their settings page and set their name as you wish (some might comply, but I'm sure it won't be 100%).  If you have an paid Canvas instance, your local Canvas admin should be able to go in and adjust things and perhaps suggest some changes as to how students are enrolled.

Hope this helps a bit.

-Chris

[ttcedwards]

Yes, it's Free for Teacher. Even if every student goes and changes their name in the system as you said, there's still no guarantee that the Grades page will show the names properly. My school used to pay for this, and now they won't, so I've got a lot of short assignments set up to work well with Canvas, but it's an absolute pain to work with paper and presentation assignments. I guess they really want you to remember it's the free version by making things harder.

[chriscas]

Hi @ttcedwards,

I moved your post to the Free For Teacher area of the community hoping people with more experience using this instance can help you out.  Unfortunately in the process the thread somehow split in two, so my apologies (I have a message in trying to se if things can be put back together again).  As far as I know though, if users do edit their names to the correct format, that would definitely show in SpeedGrader.  The question that I'm not sure about is whether users can edit all of their name details in the free for teacher version or not.  Hopefully someone with more experience in the Free for Teacher instance can chime in with more info here soon.

-Chris

[vcarmer]

I use Free for Canvas and I usually have a few students where this is an issue each year.  I have discovered that I need to take a few moments the first class period to have all the students log in to their Canvas, go to their account and edit their Profile and Settings.  If they do not do both, then you will still end up with odd situations.  Make sure that when they change sortable name in their Settings that they put a comma and a space (my students typically skip the space) when putting their last name first.

[KevinMeredith]

Hi @ttcedwards let me know if you still need assistance, I could take a look at the course and try and lend a hand. If you enable private messaging in the Community here, I can also send you a private message about this.