Anonymous Grading Overview

Instructors can hide student names from submitted assignments for anonymous grading. Enabling anonymous grading during the creation stage allows you to eliminate grading bias for high stake assignments.

Students are alerted to the anonymous grading setting on the Upload Assignment page. However, in your assignment instructions, you can also ask students not to include any information that identifies them, such as adding their names to files they attach to assignments.

Creating an Assignment for Anonymous Grading

1. Access a content area in your course.

2. Hover over Assessments and select Assignment. Complete required fields to create the assignment.
   

    

3. Scroll down the the Grading section and click on Grading Options.
   

4. Select the Enable Anonymous Grading check box and choose when you want to automatically begin removing anonymity before the end of that date.

   1. On specific date - Provide the date you want to disable anonymous grading. The system will automatically begin removing anonymity before the end of that date.
      

      Disabling anonymity after all submissions have been graded requires a due date to be set.

   2. After all submissions are graded - Provide a due date.  After students submit attempts, the due date passes and you have graded attempts, student anonymity is disabled.

      

Disabling Anonymous Grading

You can manually disable anonymous grading at any time by clearing Enable Anonymous Grading check box.

You can turn anonymous grading on and off until a student submits an attempt.  After the first submission, you can only turn it off.  If you grade half of the attempts anonymously, then turn off the anonymous setting, the items graded with revealed names will not be tracked as "Graded Anonymously".

Accessing Anonymous Submissions

You can access assignment submissions that you set for anonymous grading in the Grade Center or on the Needs Grading page.

Accessing Submissions from the Grade Center

1. After the assignment due date has passed or all attempts have been submitted, access submissions through the assignment's column in the Grade Center.

   1. For columns where you enabled anonymous grading, all cells are grayed out so you do not know who made submissions.

      
2. Click on the dropdown arrow next to the column name and select Grade Attempts.
   
3. You will be taken to the Grade Assignment page where you view submission and grade as you normally would.
   

Accessing Submissions from the 'Needs Grading' Page

1. Click on Grade Center > Needs Grading.
2. Click on the "Item Name" column title to filter the items that need grading to show only the assignment you want to grade.
3. In the User Attempt column, all identifying information is replaced with Anonymous Student and an attempt ID
   
4. Click on the dropdown arrow next to the assignment name. Click Grade All Users to begin grading.
   
5. You will be taken to the Grade Assignment page where you view submission and grade as you normally would.