[Gradebook Settings] Decouple grading permissions from gradebook permissions

[hburgiel]

I am at one of at least two institutions which would like TA's to be able to grade student work without having access to view the entire gradebook.

My ideal solution would be to give TA's "write" permissions to the right hand side of the SpeedGrader, but not "read" permission.  Access to a single assignment group would also solve my problem (for instance, a TA could see homework grades but not exam grades).

Workarounds such as offline grading and peer review do not scale well.  We don't have the staff to train and support new TA's each year for a clunky workaround.

A similar suggestion was made by anna_oh about a year ago.  We have contacted our CSM, who referred us to this forum.

Thank you for your consideration,
Heidi Burgiel

[Naomi]

Hi @hburgiel,

Currently, there are two permissions: Grades - Edit and Grades - View All Grades. By default, both of those permissions are enabled for the TA role. However, they can be modified by your school's Canvas admin. So, they could choose to keep the Grades - Edit permission enabled and disable the Grades - View All Grades permission to accomplish what you're hoping for. Here are a couple resources that you can use to learn more about those permissions: How do I set permissions for a course-level role in an account? and the Course Permissions PDF. 

Naomi

[hburgiel]

Thank you Naomi!

Based on my experiments on our test server, I believe that Grades - Edit gives TA's "read/write" permissions, while Grades - View All Grades gives "read-only" permissions.  What I need is a "write-only" role.

[mboyle4]

Hello @Naomi, I agree with Heidi. Unless I'm missing something, keeping "Grades - Edit" permission enabled just continues to allow the TA to see the entire gradebook. We don't see any combination of the existing permissions that allows for the kind of targeted grading she describes. It's either "you can see the entire gradebook" or "you can't see grades at all." In some cases, the TA might only have read-only permissions, but they can still see the grades. 

Are there any plans or options in place to allow TA's to effectively be assigned to specific assignments without seeing grades for everything?

[hesspe]

I agree that this request a) does not reflect how things are now b) would be very useful and c)  if FERPA had any real teeth would be very necessary.  Though the status still says archived,  I was able to both rate and comment on it, so has it been unarchived?

[Naomi]

Hi @hburgiel,

Thanks for following up with your experience. I was mistaken. According to Canvas Support, the way these two permissions currently work (and how you've described) is intended; that a user with just the Grades - Edit permission can both edit and view all grades. With that being the case, I've opened this idea back up so other Community users can add their thoughts and rate the idea. 

Naomi

[ellen_peters]

I also support the mentioned idea of having the option to limit the grading access of TA's to a specific assignment or assignment group in a course. I know moderated grading exists, but that complicates grading and means more work for the teachers.

[rexj]

+1 @ellen_peters 

We have moved from Moodle to Canvas. It is possible to edit permissions per activity in Moodle or more specifically edit site permissions to create a role that can grade assignments but not access the gradebook. I realize that there are differences in flexibility between running an open-source product and a SaaS product. To be clear we are after a role that can grade assignments in Speedgrader but not be able to access the gradebook.

The ability to allow a student to grade an activity, but not access the gradebook is something we are very interested in. The TA role is perfect for our use except for this detail. We have undergraduate students that are doing the grading and not typical graduate student TA’s, hence the need for the additional restrictions.  

[a_s_carvalhodua]

Allowing a student to grade a especific activity, but not access the gradebook is something we are very interested in.

[ellen_peters]

Currently, the Grades - edit permission is necessary to give someone permission to add comments in Speedgrader. In a lot of situations it is desirable that a TA can only add comments in Speedgrader, not add or edit grades.

Therefore this feature idea to have separate permissions for 1) adding/editing grades and 2) adding/editing comments in Speedgrader.

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Update 30-11: I had submitted the idea above as a separate feature idea, but it was 'merged' by @Stef_retired with this idea. The ideas are related, but they are not similar.