Exciting Changes Coming to SpeedGrader: Modernization for a Faster Grading Experience

[RaviKoll]

We’re excited to share that SpeedGrader is getting a significant upgrade! These changes are designed to make your grading process even smoother, faster, and more reliable.

What’s New? (Beta Release on October 21st, Full Release in January)

Starting on the 21st of October, Canvas institutions will have access to the newly modernized SpeedGrader in their beta environments, with a full release planned for January. This update focuses on improving the performance and stability of SpeedGrader while keeping the interface familiar and easy to use. You’ll still recognize the grading workflow you’ve come to rely on, but with some key enhancements under the hood.

Why Modernize SpeedGrader?

Grading is at the heart of every educator's workflow, and with large classes and data-heavy tasks, it can sometimes slow you down. The goal of the SpeedGrader modernization is to optimize performance for a faster, more seamless experience, especially for those working with larger courses or complex assignments. By upgrading the backend technology, we’ve ensured that SpeedGrader can handle high-demand tasks more efficiently and with greater reliability.

Key Improvements You’ll See:

1. Faster Load Times
   With the infrastructure improvements, SpeedGrader now loads grades, submissions, and data more quickly, even for larger classes, with notably faster initial page loads and quicker transitions between students.
2. Increased Stability
   We’ve made the system more resilient to handle heavy grading periods, minimizing errors and ensuring a more reliable experience across the board.

UI Updates: Familiar Yet Enhanced

While most of the updates focus on improving performance, we’ve also introduced a few tweaks to the user interface to enhance clarity and usability:

• Sections Selector: The section selector now uses a streamlined interface, making it easier to navigate between different class sections.

Sections Selector now uses an InstUI drilldown

• “No Submission” Alerts: The alert for assignments without submissions has been updated to be more prominent and visually clear.

Updated UI for “No Submission” alert

• Empty Course View: A fresh, cleaner interface for courses without content provides a better user experience

Updated UI for an empty course

• Grade Status Selector: We’ve redesigned this feature to make managing grade statuses even easier.

Updated Grade Status selector

• Rubrics: Rubrics are now always displayed in the new traditional (grid) view, even if Enhanced Rubrics is disabled. If the Enhanced Rubrics feature is enabled, instructors can also choose vertical or horizontal views; this only affects grading in SpeedGrader.

Rubrics are now always displayed as enhanced rubrics traditional view even if enhanced rubrics is disabled

• Media Attachments: Uploading and managing media attachments in submission comments is now more intuitive with an improved dialog and deletion process.

Deleting an attachment is now a trash icon rather than a red ‘x’ button

What’s Next?

The modernized SpeedGrader will be available in the Canvas beta environment in October for institutions to test and provide feedback. By January, this improved version will be available in all production environments, meaning every educator using Canvas will be able to benefit from these enhancements.

The enhanced SpeedGrader will remain available via a course or account feature flag, allowing users to toggle between versions until we’ve ensured everyone has had sufficient opportunity to experience the new functionality and offer feedback for continued improvements

We’re also working on additional updates, including support for Anonymous Grading, Moderated Grading, and a more robust Rich Content Editor for submission feedback, so stay tuned for even more improvements coming soon!

How to Get Involved:

As we roll out these improvements, we encourage you to explore the beta version of SpeedGrader in October and share your thoughts. Your feedback is vital in ensuring we continue to deliver the best possible grading experience for educators across the world.

The enhanced SpeedGrader will remain available via a course or account feature flag, allowing users to toggle between versions until we’ve ensured everyone has had sufficient opportunity to experience the new functionality and offer feedback for continued improvements

With this modernization, SpeedGrader is entering a new era—offering the same powerful grading tool, now more reliable and faster than ever before. We’re excited to see how this upgrade will make your grading process even smoother. Stay tuned for more updates as we approach the full release in January!

[themidiman]

This is exciting. @RaviKoll 

Question: Since the beta and test instances of Cloud-hosted CanvasLMS seem to run with less cloud computing power...we've noticed they are a bit slower and don't respond as quickly as the production environment/instance. Will the speed enhancements really be that accurately portrayed as they would be when fully released in Jan?

[nuscitpkg]

1. The “No Submission” Alerts screenshot is a repeat of the Sections Selector screenshot.
2. What SpeedGrader also needs is search. Sometimes, you know which student's submission you want to see, and you want to go directly to it, no mucking about sections and scrolling to find the student's work.

[sara_weaver]

Please be sure to include descriptive file names and alt text for your images in documentation.

[RaviKoll]

@themidiman You’re absolutely right that the beta and test instances of Cloud-hosted Canvas LMS generally have lower processing power, which can result in slower performance compared to the production environment. Despite these limitations, the modernized SpeedGrader in beta and test should still provide a noticeably faster experience than the previous version on those same instances, giving a close approximation of the final performance improvements.

[RaviKoll]

@nuscitpkg - Thank you for catching the screenshot error; it's now been corrected. Great point about adding "Search" functionality in SpeedGrader—we’ll definitely take that into consideration moving forward.

[LMacaulay]

I see two things that could use some adjustment.

When you filter by section, which section you are viewing is NOT displayed anywhere unless you click the arrow to view the list of sections again. Please include the section showing at the top of the list like is currently available. In the screenshot below, I have filtered on a section, but that is unclear.

The status box seems misaligned with the score box.

[juliejohnson]

Is this "Speedgrader 2: Steel Thread"?

[KatieBertel]

A major thing I noticed missing in this update is the submission status indicator in the student list. There used to be a status indicator in two places:

1. Status indicator in the student list dropdown menu: You can no longer see which students have missing submissions or graded/ungraded submissions--there is no status indicator, just a list of names. In the old SpeedGrader, there was a submission status indicator next to each student's name, i.e. checkmark for graded submissions, orange dot for ungraded submissions, and a greyed out name for missing submissions. 
2. Status indicator next to the student name: There is now a red dot next to the student's name that appears for every student regardless of their submission status. It's unclear what this red dot is supposed to indicate. In the old SpeedGrader, the indicator next to a student's name would change based on their submission status (e.g. checkmark, orange dot, no icon, etc.).

The below screenshot shows the differences between the "old" and "new" student list view.

Will the status indicator be added to this update or should we expect this loss of functionality in the production release?

[Pete5484]

Will SpeedGrader v2 provide functionality to check that all rubric ratings have been completed or that the rating or question was not attempted?

And, with file upload and media for assignments, if the file is compatibl with speedgrader will it be able to be viewed within speedgrader rather than having to be downloaded (which looses markup ability, etc)? 

---

At the moment the only way we can check rubrics have been filled out for assignments is to use @Code-with-Ski's extension to export the student & rubric data, and look to see if all the criterions have an entry. Occasionally markers do, inadvertently, miss clicking a rating scale and this is an important completeness check. And we need to add a 'Not attempted - 0' rating to ensure we can differentiate between 0 marks, not attempted and inadvertently missed by the marker.

(And our beta instance will only show traditional and vertical rubrics at the moment; switching to horizontal just displays the same vertical rubric!).

[DanielGraham]

We have had issues with slow loading of submissions within the DocViewer within SpeedGrader, so this is a very welcome improvement to SpeedGrader.

Will this beta release be available in EMEA?

[RaviKoll]

@sara_weaver Alt Text descriptions have been added to the images. It's a great callout and thank you for brining this to our attention. 

[RaviKoll]

@LMacaulay - Thank you for your suggestions. We understand the importance of seeing which section is currently being filtered without needing to reopen the list. It is a known issue which is currently being worked on. We’ve also noted the misalignment issue between the status and score boxes. I’ll ensure this is reviewed and aligned for a more consistent user experience.

[RaviKoll]

@juliejohnson - Yes, that is correct! We will rename this to something that is more relatable! Will keep you posted. 

[RaviKoll]

@DanielGraham  Yes, this update will be available in EMEA! Looking forward to your feedback once you've had the chance to test it. 

[RaviKoll]

@Pete5484 - 

For this release, we’re focused primarily on performance improvements and load time optimizations in SpeedGrader. While we haven’t implemented functional enhancements at this stage, your feedback is valuable, and we’re actively gathering insights for future updates to address functionality needs like rubric completion checks, handling of 'Not Attempted' ratings, and streamlined file viewing within SpeedGrader. We'll keep you updated as we solidify timelines for these functional enhancements. 

[DanielGraham]

@RaviKoll Thanks for letting us know this will be available in EMEA, I will certainly feedback. Can I ask, will this update improve the loading speeds in DocViewer in general or will this just be limited to SpeedGrader?

[hollands]

I had a chance to check the new SG out and it definitely seems faster even in Beta which sometimes can fall into the category of "I'll work if I feel like it".

I did urn into one thing but I'm pretty sure this is from our customized color theme for our instance. It appears the text is there at the top of the SG but very very hard to read. Canvas Speed Grader v2

[themidiman]

@KatieBertel , I've noticed this too. If there was a change to remove the display of the first student who submitted, I would be really mad. I use this all the time to get a jump on grading early submissions by jumping into SpeedGrader via the instructor To Do: list. If there was a way to upvote the need for this @RaviKoll , Please don't remove that feature!!!

@juliejohnson Yes, SpeedGrader 2: Steel Thread is what I enabled to activate the preview in beta:

[rkahn]

Faculty often think they need to click the Submit button to "enter" the Grade, but it's for Comment Submission. I suggest changing the button label from "Submit" to "Submit Comment".

[dslusser]

@RaviKoll It's refreshing to see Canvas addressing some pain points that many of us who use SpeedGrader on a daily basis experience. It's also nice to actually get the ear of some folks at Canvas to hear our suggestions. This has been a sore spot for me personally. As a 10+ year daily user of Canvas, I have refrained from participating in the community as of late because it had seemed like my (and our collective) voice(s) aren't taken seriously. I'm cautiously optimistic that things are changing for the better.

My first question is one of logistical purposes. Is this the proper forum to voice some requests and/or suggestions about the "SpeedGrader 2: Steel Thread" features? If I'm going to spend significant time reviewing the UI/UX of the updated SpeedGrader, I'd like to make sure that I am placing my thoughts and suggestions at the correct place, and that my time is not lost.

Additionally, is now the time to make requests for this product, or has that time passed because a product roadmap has already been laid out somewhere? After briefly testing out this updated SpeedGrader, I definitely have some quality of life requests and suggestions that I'd love to be heard. I (along with many of my teachers at my school) have been using @James  Canvancements along my own UserScripts to increase the speed and usability of the SpeedGrader. I realize that not all of the features and functions that James has developed, along with my own personal speed enhancer scripts for the SpeedGrader necessarily belong in a production codebase. However, considering that several of them are quite small, yet provide significant value to the SpeedGrader experience, I'd love to have a discussion with someone and/or the community about these features.

[TrinaAltman]

@RaviKoll Thank you for the information on these improvements. When you say a "Full Release in January" and "By January, this improved version will be available in all production environments, meaning every educator using Canvas will be able to benefit from these enhancements," does that mean the 'Speedgrader 2: Steel Thread' Feature Option will be enabled or disabled by default? In our beta environment, the option is Disabled/Unlocked, so it is disabled by default but users have the option to enable it if they wish in Course Settings. Is this how it will roll out in prod in January too, or will it be enabled by default for everyone?

The 11/16/24 Release Notes currently state the Default Status is 'Account (Disabled/Unlocked)', but I am not sure if that just applies to the 10/21/24 beta release, or if that applies to the 1/18/25 prod release as well.

It is critical for us to know precisely how it will come through to the production environment in terms of how we handle change management for this Feature.

Thank you,

Trina

[Maeve_McCooey]

@RaviKoll I know that this is very much in development but just flagging that when a comment is added to the submission comments box for any student it populates the comment box for all students and overwrites any other comments.

[cms_hickss]

We're noticing that the header text color for the speedgrader page is defaulting to white even though we have it black in our CSS. We have our canvas instance themed to match our school colors and the white text is failing on our gold.

Is this going to be a permanent change?

Beta: 

Production: 

[DanBurgess]

When enabling the Modernized SpeedGrader Platform option in a Beta course now, it seems to remove the Rich Content Editor functions for the Assignment Comments. I am guessing this will be fixed? 

In the meantime, it is a loss of functionality for folks who make use of it and may want to try the SpeedGrader enhancements. Doesn't provide the right incentive to folks to try the SpeedGrader enhancement if they have to give up other functionality as a result. 

[Anna-Hayman]

Hi @RaviKoll,

To echo @KatieBertel, the student submission status indicator by both the student's name and their list entry is a very helpful feature - it would be a real shame to lose it in the new UI.

I would also say that it is not clear now that the dropdown arrow has been removed in the new UI, that the student's name at the top of the viewing window is still clickable and will display the student list. I can (just about) see a change in the background colour when hovering over the student's name (possibly due to our theme) but reinstating the dropdown arrow icon would be beneficial here.

Please could you provide the use case for the "Reassign Assignment" button workflow?

When I hover over the currently greyed out Reassign Assignment button, the callout states "Student feedback required in comments above to reassign". I have uploaded a comment while acting as the test student but the button is still greyed out.

I appreciate the functionality is likely not yet available, but it would be helpful to understand the intention at this stage.

Many thanks!

[audra_agnelly]

The Rubric view selection doesn't stick. I changed my view from Traditional to Vertical, and when I move to the next student the view reverts back to Traditional. This is a lot of extra clicking if the staff wants to use a different rubric view.

[tdurbin]

Scrolling to access the comments box & submit button are causing a lot of frustrations.

Would it be possible to load the comments below the comment box like they used to, so instructors do not have to scroll to comment? This is a major pain point when they have to comment several hundred times per week.

Also there is a lot of space between the sections at the top that also forces the comment box below the fold, so if that could be condensed slightly so the comment box is easier to access for instructors that would be awesome.

[CarolWilkinson]

Please return the assignment comment boxes back to the size they used to be and the function. 

I now have to scroll down for every comment I make in order to submit it.  

On a typical week I make over 216 comments and now have 216 more mechanical movements in my arthritic hands must cope with. 

It is an extra movement that I never had to make before (previously I could adjust the space to accommodate). 

[RaviKoll]

@DanielGraham - The work has been completed on SpeedGrader, so we don’t anticipate any direct impact on DocViewer.

@hollands - This project involves a complete backend rewrite, which means that any customizations built on top of the old SpeedGrader may no longer function as expected.

@TrinaAltman - We’re taking all necessary steps to ensure a smooth transition. The new SpeedGrader will be available in production from January, set as Disabled/Unlocked at the account level, allowing institutions to enable it as they prefer. The old SpeedGrader will continue to be maintained alongside the new version for the immediate future, providing ample time for a seamless transition. Rest assured, enabling the new SpeedGrader in production will remain optional starting in January.

@Maeve_McCooey - Thank you for identifying what appears to be a bug. We’ll investigate this right away.

@cms_hickss - As mentioned, custom codes, including custom CSS, may not work as expected with the new SpeedGrader due to the backend upgrade.

@DanBurgess - Achieving feature parity is a top priority, and we are committed to making further enhancements and fixes as needed.

We’re closely reviewing all comments, and your feedback is valuable to us. If I haven’t responded to you individually, please know that I’ll be addressing your queries shortly.

[jmOrcutt]

I am not sure if it's just me, but when I grade I like to "page through" the students using the arrows at the top of the screen. So, when I select to filter based on a section, I would expect to only page through those students. However, in beta, what I get is still the full set of students, just that those not in the selected section do not have a name appearing on the top, but their assignment is still accessible for grading. I don't want to have to go to the pull down list to work through the students, and I may not be paying attention to the name, so I would end up grading everyone anyway. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of the filter?

In the graphic below, I have no filters set, so Eliza is the 4th record in the batch of 12. She is enrolled in Section 2.

All sections, student "Eliza" is in Sect 2

SO after selecting Section 1, I am still at the 4th record in a batch of 12. Only Section 1 students appear in the pull down, but I still have full functionality to grade this student's work without knowing who it is...

Section 1 selected...

[JamesSekcienski]

@RaviKoll 

I agree with @KatieBertel and @themidiman that the status indicators next to student names is a valuable piece of information when grading to save time and know which students need grading once you are in SpeedGrader.  I am also confused on what the red icon is supposed to represent and why it is applied to all students.  Seeing a red icon usually indicates something is wrong, so it feels especially confusing/misleading to see that icon next to students that have been graded.

I also agree with @hollands and @cms_hickss that there is an issue with the color contrast at the top of the SpeedGrader making it nearly impossible to read the information in that top bar.  This is not customization that is based on a CSS file upload.  This is an issue related to the custom color scheme that is selected and becomes a part of the theme customizations.  Customizing the colors in the theme settings are supposed to be supported and work throughout Canvas and need to function properly within the modernized SpeedGrader too. 

From inspecting the code, I can see that it looks like there has been a move away from using the variables for the theme colors and that potentially somewhere on the backend that generates the page it is supposed to be looking up these now hard-coded color values.  It looks like the color is set with the proper value at the top level for that bar.  However, the color is being set as white at the text level and it causes it to override the correct color.  In addition, there appears to be the use of an invalid color attribute being used on multiple HTML elements that do not support the color attribute.  Below are two examples where the color attribute is being used, but isn't valid.  The first one is the top level element for the top bar and while the attribute indicates the color would be white, this is where the color is set to the proper value based on our theme.  However, the second line is an example of the assignment due date that appears under the assignment name and the CSS on this element sets the color to white causing the accessibility issue.

<div dir="ltr" color="white" class="css-6xf1m6-view">

<span color="primary-inverse" data-testid="assignment-due-date" wrap="normal" letter-spacing="normal" class="css-e05loh-text">Due: Jan 17 at 11:59 PM, 2022</span>

In addition, yesterday when doing a demo of the the new view to some other team members, we happened to discover an assignment that showed a rubric in SpeedGrader, but the assignment didn't have a rubric attached.  When looking at the network request, I see a GraphQL request is made to get the details and I saw that it was incorrectly reporting that a rubric was associated with the assignment.  This is a test course, so a rubric may have been attached and then removed at some point, but since there is no longer a rubric attached, it shouldn't show a rubric for grading.  I will submit this as a support ticket so it can be investigated, but wanted to share in case others discover a similar issue.

[johnod120]

@RaviKoll 

I have a question about the new Speedgrader interface and Discussions.

I notice when I enable the Modernized Speedgrader feature, I lose the Previous and Next reply buttons that let you jump to each post made by the user that you're grading:

I'm hoping that will be added back as they are extremely helpful to jump around the thread and highlight the post in blue, which makes it easier to give a discussion participation grade.

Thanks!

[rmartini]

Hello! I'm just getting started testing this feature option and opened a couple of cases about some issues that I identified in case it's helpful for others.

From Case 11367932, there appear to be some issues with sorting alphabetically (case was escalated to L2):

• On the initial load of SpeedGrader, the first entry I see is the Test Student (rather than the first student listed alphabetically). It always went to the test student even if the student hadn't made a submission. In the current version of SpeedGrader, I am usually taken to the first ungraded submission (sorted alphabetically by last name).
• Drop down menu lists students alphabetically by first name (rather than last name). This conflicts with the order I see in the overall gradebook and is not what most our faculty will want to see -- especially in large courses.
• When the student name drop down is displayed and when I try to use the keyboard arrow buttons to move up/down, the highlight jumps around to random names in no clear order.

From Case 11368071, there were some issues with keyboard accessibility (this case was closed; support said that updates to SpeedGrader are in progress and feedback would be passed to the development team for consideration):

• Focus Area on Initial Page Load: When a submission loads in SpeedGrader, the focus is towards the end of the menu on the right side of the screen (the attachment button below the comment area). I would have expected the initial focus to be at the top of the page first.
• Focus Area around Gradebook Icon: The focus area around this icon is different than the other icons in the interface. It's much "tighter" around the icon itself compared to the top menu/area. Mainly pointing this out for consistency.
• Focus Area around Assignment Name: The focus area indicator around the link to the assignment name doesn't fully display. You can only see the right side of the outline (top, left, and bottom sides don't have enough room to display).
• No Focus Area around Name/Drop Down Menu and Can't Select Name: When I'm using only a keyboard and tab to the student drop down, there's no visual indication that I should be able to select anything to make the drop down menu appear. This related to what @Anna-Hayman pointed out as well. Additionally, once the menu is expanded, I can't immediately navigate to the options in that drop down menu using enter/tab/arrows up or down. As I continue to tab, I move through the rest of the interface but it's blocked by the menu still being displayed (because it doesn't automatically close). Only towards the end of the page am I able to navigate to names in the menu or change sections. I also observed similar issues as @jmOrcutt when I changed sections (there's no indication of which student or section you're looking at).

[olsona]

Hello,

I like the updates.

@audra_agnelly mentioned the rubric view not sticking from one student to the next, but mine does. I would like to take it a step further and allow the instructor to set a default rubric view or have it remember what was last selected.

Also, the Instructor Score that appears when in the rubric is confusing. I had entered points prior to viewing the rubric, but the Instructor Score still shows 0 pts. Also, if the rubric had already been saved, the --/4 should be showing whatever rating was selected out of 4; Example 4/4

Thank you,
Andrew

[dmackay1i]

Hi there, just chiming in with the findings from our testing, most of which I believe have already been identified:

1. The Needs Marking icon is very useful but seem to have disappeared in this Feature Option. Additionally we aren't sure what the red dot icon indicates - if it's meant to be the new Needs Marking icon, it's not working correctly in our instance.
2. The RCE is missing from the text feedback field. This was a welcome addition to the current SpeedGrader interface, and we would be disappointed if it were missing from this Feature Option.
3. We've seen some unexpected results when changing the status of a submission:
   • After changing a student's submission then navigating to the next or previous student, the status lingers in the next student's status
   • After navigating back to the first student the new status disappears
   • Navigating back to the full Markbook then opening the Submission Tray shows the new status correctly, as it does when navigating to full SpeedGrader
   • The other students' submission status also returns to its original state. It's possibly all just a weird caching issue, but I think it's worth noting nonetheless.

[themidiman]

@RaviKoll ,

1. Is there a testing regime you would like everyone involved to follow? It seems like everyone on this blog post is just pointing out inconsistencies with the existing SpeedGrader.
2. Speaking of inconsistencies, I'm a bit confused about 'Submit Assessment' button when using a rubric attached to an assignment. In current SG the levels assign a point value and if the box for rubric is used for assignment grading, it assign points and checks off the graded status for the student when the 'Save' button is clicked. Is this what the 'Submit Assessment' button is for now? When I hit the 'Submit Assessment' button nothing happens to the current student's assessment information. The information just disappears and reverts back to blank fields. Also it does not mark the student submission as having been graded that I can see. Here is a short video of what I'm experiencing: https://app.screencast.com/BBTuZB7HTBrJW