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The Assignments tool now features the ability to assign specific graders to students (or groups of students) and options for creating a shared grading workflow incorporating a final instructor approval stage.

These options can be beneficial when managing classes with large teaching teams and as a method by which an instructor can review any or all feedback before its release to students.

Instructors can allocate grading tasks to specific teaching assistants or marker-graders via the Evaluators options available when editing an individual Assignment. These must be configured for each Assignment.

Note

Configure any Evaluators settings before an Assignment is made available to students. The Evaluators options will no longer be available once submissions have been received.


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Default settings

By default, all Instructors and Teaching Assistants can evaluate submissions and publish feedback in an Assignment. The features described below can expand, control, and/or restrict the grading workflow, but are entirely optional.

Edit Evaluators to enable advanced assessment

Instructors can choose who can evaluate a particular Assignment from a list of all Instructors and Teaching Assistants in a site. This can be helpful if grading duties are separated by course section or are to be otherwise exclusively marked by specific individuals.

Anyone not selected as an Evaluator for a specific Assignment will still be able to view all student submissions and details but will not be able to grade or provide feedback.

Evaluators can utilize the standard Submission grading options, including the annotation tools, Rubrics, and Overall Feedback.

Note

Subsequent options will not display unless Edit Evaluators is enabled by clicking and saving, even if no changes are made to the selection.

Evaluators options under Evaluation and Feedback sub-menu

Assign grading responsibility using Evaluators

Edit an Assignment and find the Evaluation & Feedback settings.

  1. Click Evaluators, which will initially list all Instructors and Teaching Assistants in the course site. Everyone in these roles can grade any submission to the Assignment.

  2. Select Edit Evaluators to choose who will be allowed to grade the Assignment. This can be a subset of the teaching team tasked with marking or the whole team to allow for shared grading.

  3. Choose the Evaluators and select Save. All designated Evaluators will now be listed below.

a screenshot of the editing screen showing that all Evaluators are listed once the tool is configured

Remove all Evaluator settings

Evaluator options can be removed from an Assignment (even if submissions have been received) by returning to Edit Evaluators and removing any selected Evaluators. This will reset to the default grading method, where all members of the teaching team can evaluate submissions and publish feedback.

Note

It will not be possible to re-enable Evaluators once removed and any shared evaluation will be lost.


Manage Publishers to control the release of feedback

Instructors can designate who can publish any grades or feedback written by the Evaluators. This is helpful for those who want to review marking or have the final say in grades before they are released. Manage Publishers presents three options:

  • All evaluators can publish any evaluations (for shared grading).

  • Evaluators can only publish their evaluation (for restricted grading and release).

  • Manually select publishers (to select only those who can review and publish already evaluated work).

Note

Only those in the Instructor role can be manually selected as a Publisher. TAs must be changed to the Instructor role if they are part of the review and release process.

Create a grading, review, and release workflow using Publishers

  1. Use Manually select publishers to designate who of the Evaluators can publish results (the step that releases feedback to students and prompts a notification).

  2. Click Manage Publishers (which will have appeared below the first dropdown menu) and select those from the list to be set as the Publisher role. Click Save.

a screenshot of the Assignment options showing an example of two manually selected publishers

Anyone not designated as a Publisher can provide feedback (per their status as an Evaluator) and will have the Ready for Review button on their grading screen in place of the standard draft and publish options. Click Ready for Review to make the initial feedback available for review by any Publishers.

Those in the Publisher role can view, edit, and then publish the prepared feedback.

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Manage Allocations to assign students, Sections, or Groups to specific Evaluators

All Evaluators can see and grade all submissions with the default settings, but Evaluator grading responsibility can be restricted via Manage Allocations. This may be useful in large classes where TAs are responsible for specific Sections or Groups.

Additionally, more than one Evaluator can be allocated to each student for shared or aggregate grading.

Note

There must be more than one Evaluator set for the Manage Allocations options to display.

The Allocation Options provide both manual and automatic creation methods. It is possible to make changes after random allocation, but applying a new random allocation will override previous selections.

Automatically allocate Evaluators to students

Automatically allocate by choosing from the dropdown menu and clicking Apply Allocation Method. The options are:

  • Allocate all evaluators to every learner.

  • Randomly allocate 1…2…3 evaluator(s) to every learner evenly (further options become available if there is more than one Evaluator in the Assignment).

Info

Students who have not been assigned an Evaluator will be flagged when the Done button is selected. The prompt will offer to randomly assign an Evaluator to the listed students or to return to the manual allocation screen for further manual adjustment.

Assign one or more Evaluators to each student

Manage Allocations can be used to assign teaching assistants or marker-graders to specific students. This can be done in place of managing TA Enrollment options within the Classlist tool, although restricting TA access to a specific Section is more easily accomplished in that way (and only needs to be set up once).

  1. Choose Randomly allocate 1…2…3 evaluator(s) to every learner evenly and then click Apply Allocation Method. The table of Student and Evaluator associations will populate but can be edited.

  2. Click Done when satisfied.

Note

If individual allocations are made in this way, the subsequent Coordinate Multiple Evaluators options will disappear.

Manually match students with Evaluators

  1. Do not use the Apply Allocation Method options.

  2. Use the checkboxes in the table of student names to associate students to Evaluators.

    • Filters can help organizing students by Sections or Groups, which can be used when assigning TAs or marker-graders to their respective labs/seminars/tutorials.

The manual allocation selection screen with the Filters drop-down menu displayed.
Note

Allocation cannot occur if the student and Evaluator do not share Section or Group membership. The names will be listed but cannot be selected.


Remove Allocations

Any allocation method can be undone by returning to the Manage Allocations menu and switching to the Allocate all evaluators to every learner option in the dropdown.


Coordinate Multiple Evaluators

If multiple Evaluators have been allocated to each student (which is the default behaviour for both standard Assignment grading and what will happen if Evaluators have been enabled), then Instructors can choose between One shared evaluation and Multiple individual evaluations.

Note

The Coordinate Multiple Evaluators options cannot be changed after a student submission has been graded (even if only saved as a draft).

The selection depends on the preferred workflow and the number of Evaluators in a site:

  • One shared evaluation provides the standard (and potentially collaborative) grading experience where all Evaluators access a single shared grading and feedback area and then, if applicable, Publishers release this to students.

  • Multiple individual evaluations gives a separate grading and feedback section to each Evaluator, who can save their feedback using the Ready to Aggregate button. Publishers then view, combine, and release a single instance of combined feedback. This aggregation is done manually and does not need to be an average of other scores.

Grade collaboratively

Collaborative grading with aggregation workflow

  1. [Evaluators ] View view a submission, grade, and save feedback with the as normal, then click Ready to Aggregate button.

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The Aggregated tab, which can be edited once all Evaluators have graded the submission.Image Removed
  1. [Publishers] Each Evaluator with completed feedback will get Publishers will see each piece of completed feedback flagged with a checkmark [2]. All Evaluators must submit their grading before Publishers can aggregate [3] and there is no way to override this.

  2. [Publishers ] Go to use the Aggregated tab [1] and manually combine grades into a final evaluation. Click Publish to release to students. Only the information from the Aggregated tab is shared with students.

Section membership and responsibility

The Edit Evaluators tool will check that each course section has at least one Evaluator assigned and will prompt if coverage is missing. This will only be of concern if there are TAs associated with specific sections (as configured by the Enrollment options within the Classlist tool). If that’s the case, ensure that each section has an Evaluator.

TAs added to a course site using the Add an Instructor or Teaching Assistant homepage widget have membership with all sections and grading responsibility can be restricted in Manage Allocations.

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The Aggregated tab, which can be edited once all Evaluators have graded the submission.Image Added

Notes on the shared grading experience

Evaluators will see the full class list of student names and attachments on an Assignment’s View Submissions page, but will only have actual grading access for students to which they have been allocated. This may be confusing when using random allocation options.

Evaluators can see one another’s saved feedback when the Publisher options are enabled. Additionally, any inline grading/markup on a student’s uploaded file is shared between all Evaluators: comments, highlights, etc. will be visible to all. Good practice may involve TAs or marker-graders leaving their initials on inline comments.