@omar_ruvalcaba
What a great question. I had never used anonymous peer reviews, and hadn't done peer reviews at all in a couple of years, so I had to do some research. I now feel like I know more about anonymous peer reviews than anybody should.
Anonymous grading inside SpeedGrader has nothing to do with anonymous peer reviews for the assignment.
If an assignment is marked with anonymous peer reviews ...
then this is what the student sees on their submission page. The student submission page is what the student sees when they go to the assignment.
Here's how to interpret that:
- The student submitted the assignment on May 24 at 11:38pm.
- The student needs to fill out a peer review on an Anonymous User.
- The student received feedback from the instructor (James Jones) at 11:39pm.
- The student received feedback from another student (Anonymous User) at 11:52pm.
The only thing that would change if you turned off the "Peer Reviews Appear Anonymously" is that instead of saying "Anonymous User" it would give the name of the student that the peer review needs completed for.
Note that the "Anonymous User" comment "no hablo ingles" remained anonymous because it was filled out when the anonymous setting was checked.
If I turn off the anonymous peer review and a student leaves a comment, then their name shows.
This is what shows in the To Do list for the student. Note: Anonymous is the name of the assignment, not the name of the student for which the peer review is assigned. After the fact, I realize that's confusing.
I'm a student in my own class as well as the teacher, so sometimes thinks act differently for me.
When I go to my submission page, I (as the teacher) see the name of the students I've been assigned.
And when I click on the student I've been given to peer review, I see the comments with the names of the students.
When a fake student (Jason Smith) who is not also an instructor tries to do the same thing, they see this
And when they click on Anonymous User, they see only the feedback that they have provided. The name is not anonymous since it is Jason looking at the feedback he provided to Anonymous user.
Now, to answer your question ... is there an [easy] way to tell which students have completed their feedback?
Yes.
Go to the Assignment and click on Peer Reviews
The names are not anonymous here and you can quickly tell that James and Jason both reviewed Danny, but that Danny has not reviewed James or Jason.
If anonymous peer reviews are enabled, then clicking on the name of any student with a review gives me an access denied page. I wondered if this was some strange interaction because I was dual enrolled as a student and teacher, so I removed myself as a student and still go the denied message.
If anonymous peer reviews is not selected, then you will be able (as the teacher) to view the pages that were previously denied. That is, you can now see the reviews left by the students.
Regardless, the Peer Reviews page will show you that they did the peer review, even if you cannot see what they wrote.
This Access Denied error has nothing to do with SpeedGrader. It appears whether hiding the student names is enabled or not. It is based on whether the peer reviews are anonymous within the assignment settings.
SpeedGrader is only confounding the issue. The setting in SpeedGrader does not impact how the names appear in the rest of Canvas.
In SpeedGrader, there is an option to Hide student names in the SpeedGrader. Note the "in the SpeedGrader" at the end. It doesn't hide them other places.
When that is checked, student names become "Student 1", "Student 2", etc.
Here's what the student's submission information looks like in SpeedGrader. The names are anonymous to the instructor because the hiding names is checked. By the way, that was checked the entire time I've been writing this -- what you do in SpeedGrader doesn't affect what shows up for the peer reviews.
You may be able to turn off "hide student names" in SpeedGrader. Anonymous to the students doesn't have to be anonymous to the instructor. But if you want it to be, then go to the Peer Review page to see who has completed the peer review.
