Anonymous Discussions and Grading

[jswartz]

Hi,

Quick question do we have any examples of what Anonymous discussions and grading will look like? We found in the recent blog post and I heard from support that your team is planning to implement this with the July 20 release. Our institution has pretty big concerns about this feature and would really like to see how it works with grading and speedgrader, but since it is not in beta or test our team cannot test it. 

Would it be possible to get screenshots or get access to test it in beta or test?

Thanks,

Josh 

[JamesSekcienski]

@jswartz 

If you don't currently see this feature, then it likely needs to be enabled or at least unlocked by an admin.

Canvas Feature Option Summary 

How do I use Discussions Redesign as an instructor? 

Also, if a discussion is Anonymous, then it can't be used for grading or group discussions.  How do I create a discussion using Discussions Redesign as an instructor? - Add Discussion Options 

[jswartz]

James, 

Thank you for following up. I am actually the admin for our institution and have checked all the guidance 🙂  We have enabled the New Discussion Interface feature in a Sub-account in our production environment and you are correct RIGHT NOW Anonymous discussions are only available with ungraded discussions, but as I mentioned above I found out from the product blog and support that on July 20th they will be enabling this setting for graded discussions.

Our issue is we would like to see what grading these in speedgrader looks like so we can prepare guidance for our Faculty before that option goes live in July. 

[JamesSekcienski]

@jswartz 

Thank you for the additional information.  Sorry for misinterpreting your original question.  This is something new that I'm just learning about too as I thought anonymous discussions weren't going to work with graded discussions based on existing documentation.  I see that the 2-page overview of discussions also mentions that it will work with graded discussions.  I'm also curious how this is supposed to work.

@SamGarza1 Are you able to provide any insight on this?  Are anonymous discussions going to be able to be graded too with the July 20th release?

[lshulman]

<Are anonymous discussions going to be able to be graded>

I've been reading a lot lately about grading of anonymous discussion posts. I haven't joined the discussion til now as I don't use anonymous discussions. But I am wondering just HOW one could grade an anonymous post without knowing WHO to give the grade to (since it is posted without a name = anonymously)???

[jswartz]

Yea @lshulman that is kind of our concern as well, we don't really know how it would work. 

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

I too am wondering how anonymous grading would work.  I guess all the posts of a particular anonymous student could be visible in speedgrader while grading, but if a comment is made, or even just after a grade is posted the teacher could see who has a new grade in the gradebook.  

Has anyone noticed that if you make a discussion graded and save, even if nobody has posted to it, you can't uncheck "Graded" and have anonymous be available.  Those anonymous options remain grayed out. If you duplicate the discussion in an ungraded state, "Graded" being unchecked, you still can't make the duplicate anonymous.  One has to create a whole new discussion.

[JAMESRYANPALMER]

I don't know if this is the same thing or not, but I'm hoping for a way to have the posts anonymous to students, but not to the teacher. I would like the students to have anonymity between each other, but for me to still know who posted what (I have responsibilities and requirements around maintaining and holding students accountable for things they post). 

I also want to be able to grade students (e.g., give them credit for having done the post), but allow them to be anonymous from their peers. I could see there being to types of anonymous discussion options - one where they are anonymous to everyone (and therefore not graded) and another where they are only anonymous to other students (could be graded). I'm hoping this is what the new feature rollout will include. 🙂

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

Someone at my school brought up anonymous graded surveys, where points are given just for participating.  Perhaps we could have that option, which is useful for anonymous discussions where ideas and thoughts are shared but not scored for content.  Wouldn't always be appropriate but would be a nice tool.

[JamesSekcienski]

Hello @Nancy_Webb_CCSF,

I agree that it would be great to have anonymous graded surveys based on participation.  I know originally New Quizzes didn't have plans to include feature parity for surveys from Classic Quizzes.  However, I recently looked at the Product Roadmap and found something promising for the future in the Q1 2025 & Beyond column for New Quizzes: 

New Quizzes will now allow instructors to gather anonymous student feedback, to collect insights and improve the learning experience. 

Even though this would still be awhile until we see it, it is nice to know that they are seriously looking into adding this since it is listed on the Product Roadmap 🤞

[lshulman]

I believe Nancy's suggestion was regarding anonymous DISCUSSIONS - that they could be "graded" as "complete/incomplete" the way anonymous surveys are graded. As with anonymous surveys, we would not be able to know the content of each student's post (once there are multiple anonymous posts) even when we see the automatic check or X mark. But at least we could give students credit for doing the post.