10 things you need to know about online marking in Canvas

Posted on: 6 July 2021 by Strategic Change Communications Team in Canvas at Liverpool

Ben McGrae from the Canvas at Liverpool Project Team has pulled together 10 of the most common issues associated with marking in Canvas, covering everything from rubrics to using SpeedGrader and Turnitin. Definitely an essential read for anyone setting up resits this summer.

1. Make sure Manual Post Grades is switched on

Whether you’re using Turnitin or SpeedGrader as the assignment submission area, it’s important that your course has Manual Post Grades set within the Grades area of the course. This is because by default, courses have this set as automatic, and even when using Turnitin, marks can accidentally be released to students as soon as the marker enters the score.

This setting only has to be switched once before marking begins and the switch will follow for any future assignments set within the course. Here is a link to guide you through the process.

2. Hide the Total column from students

This is a recent issue we’ve only discovered, and seems to affect users who are using the “Assign Groups Weight” feature in Canvas, which allows you to assign a % weighting against an assignment, and Canvas will calculate a final score. The issue is that students have been able to see a score against their assignment before moderation and marking has finished, due to a Total column revealing a score.

This can be hidden in the Settings area of your course, this guide will show you how to do this.

3. Students don’t receive a digital receipt when they submit their work

Students no longer receive an automatic email to their Outlook with the date and time they submitted. For staff, you can still see who submitted on time or late. But as a result of this, departments have had to change their instructions to students on how they can record their date of submission.

For Turnitin – students will have to navigate back to the assignment submission area of the course and where their file is submitted, there will be a paper icon for them to click on and the option to “Download Digital Receipt” will appear. When the student click this, the digital receipt will download to their computer as a PDF.
For SpeedGrader – when the student submits their work, a date and time will appear in the submission area. We recommend advising students take a screen shot of this, if they need evidence outside of Canvas.

4. If you’re using Turnitin to mark, make sure you mark within the Turnitin inbox

When it comes to marking assignments, if the assignment has been set as a Turnitin submission, make sure you mark within the Turnitin inbox. This should appear by opening the assignment in Assignments in your course and the Turnitin inbox appearing on screen. Similarly to the Turnitin inbox in VITAL, you’ll need to click the pencil icon to open the papers.

Unfortunately, when you open up the assignments, there is a link to SpeedGrader in the list of options on the right hand side. This allows you to use SpeedGrader marking tools and feedback, which you’ll want to avoid if Turnitin is the chosen marking tool for your assignment.

5. If you accidentally mark Turnitin assignments in SpeedGrader, you can still reveal feedback to students

If you do accidentally mark a Turnitin assignment in SpeedGrader, don’t worry as students will still be able to access the mark and feedback you’ve left. What we need to do is go to “Grades” in the course, and find the assignment column for what you’ve marked. Then we post grades by clicking the 3 dots next to the assignment name and choose “Post Grades” (see point 7).

The students will be notified by email that their marks and feedback have been released; they’ll log into Canvas and go to Grades – and be able to open their marks and feedback from there.

Here is a student guide on how students view SpeedGrader feedback.

6. Turnitin Rubrics and QuickMarks in VITAL won’t have transferred over into Turnitin in Canvas

Despite CSD moving most of your content from VITAL to Canvas, Turnitin rubrics and QuickMarks won’t have transferred over. To get access to either in Canvas, you or a colleague who’s involved in the assessment, are going to have to login to VITAL, open up any Turnitin assignment, and export either the Rubric or QuickMark library. Then open up a Turnitin assignment within Canvas and import.

Here is a short video on how rubrics can be transferred over
How to download QuickMark sets (do this in VITAL)
How to upload QuickMark set (carry out in Canvas)

7. If you’re using SpeedGrader, remember to post grades

SpeedGrader doesn’t have a post date set against the assignment. As long as you set Manual Post Grades in point 1, then it’ll be down to anyone who has Teacher access to the course to post the marks and feedback to the students.

Here is a guide on how to do this.

8. SpeedGrader allows you to mark media files and group assignments

If you have an assignment that requires that students to work in a group or they have to submit a media file for submission, then SpeedGrader will allow you to mark and leave feedback for both scenarios.

Here is a guide on how to set up a Group assignment.
Here is a link on how to set up a submission link for media uploads.

9. External examiners need to be manually added in the People area

Similarly to VITAL, external examiners will need an MWS account to access Canvas. This can be requested through the CSD service desk at servicedesk@liv.ac.uk

Once you have the MWS username enabled, you can add the external examiner in the People area of the course.

Here is a guide on how to do this

10. How to assign markers to their own marking using SpeedGrader

Moving to Canvas, we’ve lost the Turnitin by Groups option, where we could assign a number of submissions to a marker. This can be done using SpeedGrader and we have a guide on how to set this up.

Here is a guide on how to do this.

Keywords: Canvas, Online marking , Turnitin, SpeedGrader.