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Group sets in Canvas group assignments are often difficult to set up correctly. If steps are not performed in exactly the correct order, SpeedGrader can be impacted in ways that make the grading process very difficult. In many cases, fixing the issue is a lengthy, troubling, and confusing task. When setting up group sets, instructors frequently forget to organize students into groups before students submit to assignments. When a student submits to an assignment before students have been organized into group sets, student submissions will not display correctly in SpeedGrader. If this is for a discussion post, discussion posts will often not display in the SpeedGrader and instructors will need to search for individual discussion posts to grade them. In some instances of this issue, we've seen instructors also be unable to view any comments that they are leaving. This issue occurs most often when submissions are received before group sets have been organized, when an assignment is changed to a group assignment after submissions have been received, or when a group set has been assigned to an assignment/discussion but is later deleted. We believe that all Canvas users would benefit greatly from a notification or message system that will help instructors catch these errors before they occur. If a system were in place to automatically recognize and warn instructors that an assignment or discussion is being assigned to a group set that does not exist or is incomplete, it would be much easier to prevent these issues that occur within the SpeedGrader. This will encourage instructors to ensure that the group set is properly configured before they create and publish the assignment or discussion. Messages like "there are currently X number of students who are unassigned in this group set," or that "the group set you want to delete is currently assigned to the following assignments" would be very helpful to instructors and prevent issues with the SpeedGrader from occurring. ... View more

The Rubric Tool in Canvas does not have the flexibility for instructors to share a grading rubric with the TAs while hiding the rubric from students. Currently, the Rubric Tool cannot be hidden from students. However, a rubric that is only visible to instructors and TAs/Graders will allow for a similar grading standard and still allow students to have full freedom on how to choose to work on their assignment.  ... View more

TLDR: SpeedGrader will be rendered unusable when there are “too many” submissions (2500+). Canvas needs to implement a solution so that SpeedGrader can still be used in this case. The solution does not necessarily have to increase SpeedGrader’s capacity. An alternative would be to limit how many submissions SpeedGrader loads at once. Partitioning by the course’s sections is a possibility and the functionality is already there in SpeedGrader (in the screenshot). However, the option does not appear because the SpeedGrader UI does not load before the error is thrown. More suggestions are offered in the "Suggestions" section below. Overview: Canvas recently added an error message that is visible to the instructor when SpeedGrader takes too long to load the submissions. This message was necessary because the browser eventually timeouts, ceasing any further loading. The error (in the screenshot) informs the client to try again or that there may be too many records to load in SpeedGrader. Although this error illuminates a bit more on the situation, Canvas does not give a viable solution or workaround, effectively rendering SpeedGrader useless for a large class.  Yes, it is possible that an instructor can  download the submissions, manually grade each, and then input the grades back into Canvas.  However, for 2500+ students, this is not practical.  We would really like to have some functionality to use SpeedGrader to grade large classes on Canvas. Suggestions:      •     C hange the way SpeedGrader loads such that the UI still loads even if the submissions do not load.      •     A dd a setting to load a single section by default.      •     A dd a dropdown menu that can select which section (set to All by default) to load in SpeedGrader.      •     The  section that the Gradebook is set to filter to will be the inherited filter for SpeedGrader. Steps to Reproduce: *Prerequisite Canvas course must have 2500+ students* Create an assignment (issue is most apparent in a file submission assignment). Load SpeedGrader for the assignment.   Expected: Provide a workaround when SpeedGrader fails to load after the browser times out (suggestions offered above) and describe the workaround in the displayed error message. Actual: SpeedGrader is stuck on the “loading…” white screen and displays an error to try again. Despite trying again, the same outcome will occur and instructors will still be unable to grade using SpeedGrader. ... View more