[ARCHIVED] Permanently hide student names in gradebook?

[kathy_scott]

Hi, does anyone know if it is possible to permanently hide student names in gradebook? When looking at the Grades page, you can 'Hide Student Names' but if you leave the page and come back the names are visible again. Is it possible to make this permanent? Can an admin lock this, so that it is not able to be changed by any other users?

[rake_9]

I'm curious as to why you would need this.  What is the use-case?

[QC99_tsilvius]

Hi  @kathy_scott ​. Can you offer a scenario to help us understand?

If I could take a guess here, is your Canvas integrated with your institution's SIS like Banner or PowerSchool? If so, that would mean your student roles are automatically enrolled in automatically-created Canvas courses. When this happens and students drop your class you no longer can make them UNavailable nor remove them from PEOPLE, which means they area still visible in Grades until your Registrar/CanvasSystemAdmin/SchoolDistrictCounselororPrincipal/<whoever does the enrolling/unenrolling for the institution in the SIS> removes them from the SIS and then when your SIS syncs with your instance of Canvas to remove the students from your class enrollments.

Is this something like the scenario you're experiencing? The more tech/scenario details you can provide the faster (and hopefully more accurately our suggestions will be) to help you faster. Make sense? Tag my name in your reply if you don't mind so I get the notification to come back here.

[kathy_scott]

Hi QC99.tsilvius​ and  @rake_9 ​

Thanks for getting back to me.

I guess the situation I'm more referring to is trying to maintain anonymity whilst grading. As admins, we switch on 'anonymous grading' at the sub-account level and so the Speedgrader end is always anonymous. However, a teacher/marker logs in to Canvas to access Speedgrader, and so is able to 'see' the course Gradebook. Here, the student names are visible (unless you tick 'hide student names') so it is possible for the marker to click on the student name and get through to their submission - thus identifying which essay was theirs and potentially introducing bias. If 'hide student names' could be enforced, or made permanent by admins, then there would not be a link to the assignment and the whole process could be anonymous from the point of view of the marker.

Does that make sense?

Thanks!

[QC99_tsilvius]

It does make sense,  @kathy_scott ​; however, I think this is a bit beyond my experience, unfortunately. In K12 I have not needed to use anonymous grading yet. But for all things "grading" you might be interested in joining the event here: Mobile Series: Speed Grading without Crashing (Fall 2016)  At the time of this reply it is flashing at the top of the Community Pages. Kristin and Biray are collaborating to run the repeat session and are grading pros who might have ideas for the support you're looking for. The session does appear to focus on Mobile Grading practice with a SpeedGrader focus; however, anonymous grading concerns (on both computer and SGapp) sounds like an interesting discussion topic.

[kathy_scott]

Thanks QC99.tsilvius​. You're right, that grading course might be a good place to get some advice/start some discussions. I think the needs surrounding anonymity are slightly different between the US and the UK, which may be one reason you've not had to use anonymous grading yet, but I appreciate you taking the time to have a think about this for me. Back to the drawing board I go

[rake_9]

So, all of the grading happens in Speedgrader? This particular type of instructor / grader never needs to enter the actual gradebook at all?  Interesting question.  I know how I would have solved it in my old LMS, but not in Canvas (we're still pretty new).  Curious, because I can see us being asked to make something similar happen for large courses with graders....

[kathy_scott]

Hi  @rake_9 ​, yes, technically these markers, for us, do not need to see Gradebook - and in fact we'd rather they didn't because of the possibilities of changing grades there and working out who submitted what etc. I've worked out a way to make grades unchangeable by these people in gradebook, which means they also can't directly link to speedgrader for a specific student, but without being able to permanently 'hide student names' they are still technically able to click the student name and deanonymise the whole process that way. If you ever work out a way of achieving it, please let me know!

[kathy_scott]

It seems other people have experienced the same sort of problem and a couple of feature requests are open at the moment - so if anyone wants to vote on them that would be good - please!  " modifiedtitle="true" title="Separate assignment grading from grade book access   and

[Robbie_Grant]

 @kathy_scott ,

We are giving the Canvas Admins area a little bit of love (especially questions that are really, really old) and just want to check in with you.  This will also bring this question new attention. 

Were you able to find an answer to your question? I am going to go ahead and mark this question as answered because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need. If you still have a question about this or if you have information that you would like to share with the community, by all means, please do come back and leave a comment.  Also, if this question has been answered by one of the previous replies, please feel free to mark that answer as correct.

Robbie