When Anonymous Grading is on, hide Student Name in Gradebook

[tita]

Use case: Our Law school gives exams that must be anonymously graded by the instructors. The "Hide Names" feature in Gradebook didn't stick, because it could be turned off. In Dec 2015, Canvas released Canvas Studio: Anonymous Grading (hereafter called "AG"), which  allows the account admin  to lock all assignments in an account, subaccount (department) or course to be anonymously graded; this can only be turned off by an account admin. Although it is tantalizingly close, turning on AG alone does not guarantee anonymity to students using Assignments and Quizzes and we are unable to take advantage of it. The solution described below is a more detailed and prescriptive version of Completely Anonymous Grading, Persistently Blind Grading which is up for a vote through August 3, so if it appeals to you, please vote for Completely Anonymous Grading, Persistently Blind Grading!

Problem: Once Assignments are graded, scores appear within Grades next to student name and other IDs, and appear in the Exported CSV. An instructor can look in Grades or the csv to find grades next to student names and return back to Speedgrader and adjust them while an assignment is muted. They could also import changes or directly edit grades in Grades. As far as I can tell, there isn't an audit trail for this, as advertised on Canvas Studio: Anonymous Grading.

Proposed Solution: While we are not supposed to propose solutions, I believe this one is the most flexible to various use cases: Turning on the AG feature should hide student names and other identifiable IDs (SIS ID, Canvas ID, etc.)  within the Grades table and exported csv. The Search field and Individual View>Content Selection should also be removed when AG is on.

P.S. There is another identity leak: When Anonymous Grading is on, don't add student name to filename in bulk downloaded files which comes up for a vote on June 1-- Please vote for both so AG can be truly "Anonymous!"

[tita]

to follow up to main idea, once the fix was in place, each school would need to do some work to allow an instructor to enter a course grade into the school's SIS

1. Schools build a direct integration to send grades to their SIS by SIS ID, without visually displaying identifiable information to instructors. OR
2. Schools insert a SIS-generated blind grading ID (specific to course section AND student) into the Grades table and the exported csv if possible (We would not rely on an integration that sends Canvas grades to our SIS our user research into instructor grading practices showed LMS gradebooks rarely offer enough control for instructors to fine tune calculations, such as drop lowest grade, etc.; most do their calculations offline.)

Also, I’m not sure if all schools with anonymous grading also have non-anonymous components to the course grade such as papers or participation, but we do. Since we have courses within a subaccount that have anonymous final exams in one section and non-anonymous papers (written in lieu of taking an exam) in another section, as well as a participation component for about half of the courses, that school's registrar will need to send a correspondence tables tying student to their blind grading ID for appropriate sections at appropriate times. This names-ID  correspondence could be sent manually through email or, if Canvas had this feature built in, names could be released per section within Grades.

[tita]

*If AG is already auditable please let me know where. Otherwise, the way to actually make this auditable  1) create a “Participation Grading type assignment” that doesn’t hide names in Speedgrader even if AG is on 2) while AG was on, Canvas would need to Mute Assignments within Speedgrader should prevent scores from flowing to the instructor view of Grades (not just students) AND eliminate direct editing of assignment grades in Grades. This solution is also acceptable, but seems harder to implement, so I haven't proposed it.

[tita]

following up again. I don't think we can set the course to be default wholly anonymous, and require instructors to then figure out who students are by making them use a correspondence table. I also think the idea that instructors will calculate final grade in Gradebook is actually likely--I don't think it accommodates all the ways they think about generating their final grade--it's not always a simple calculation. Thus I haven't been encouraging people to vote for this exact idea.

[Renee_Carney]

We appreciate you, and the submission of your idea. Your dialogue helps our product teams prioritize feature development. Unfortunately, this idea has been archived because it did not meet the 100-vote threshold within the 3-month voting period. Learn more at: How does the voting process work for feature ideas?

Can archived ideas still become a feature?  Potentially, yes. Archived ideas can be resubmitted by Community members. As people’s needs change, previously submitted ideas may gain additional traction. Feature ideas are evaluated as a whole and influence product direction.

[kathy_scott]

This seems logical to me - to make the whole process truly anonymous. It would be good if this could be reconsidered.

[Renee_Carney]

This idea has resurfaced from archive in https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/cold-storage?sr=search&searchId=a7843cd7-e1a4-4a41-ae80-39dcd...‌ and reopened for voting because it relates to https://community.canvaslms.com/community/ideas/priority-double-blind-grading?sr=search&searchId=c22...‌.  

[fidalgok]

Given the last comment date on this idea suggestion, I'm not sure if I should comment here or create a new post about this topic. I'd like to just offer my support for this suggestion. If there was a way to provide an option at the course level to simply hide student names in the grade book as a persistent option I think that may help satisfy this requirement.

Our faculty would like the option to prevent any accidental grading biases by viewing student names in the grade book. With this option turned on it would simply remove any of the identifying columns until they're ready to download or view their final grades for the semester. They would prefer not to be influenced by seeing student names when they are setting final grade curves once all assignments or other activities have been graded. 

[ProductPanda]

Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.