• Canvas,  Educational Tools,  Teaching & Learning

    Canvas Updates: Accessing SpeedGrader for New Quizzes 

    Reading Time: 2 minutes In its May 20 update, Canvas has made it easy to access SpeedGrader for a New Quiz. Previously, you’d have to find the New Quiz in the gradebook or in your “to-grade” list to get to SpeedGrader. Now, you can access it through just about anywhere you can access a New Quiz in Canvas – including inside the build pages for the New Quiz itself!   From Canvas modules or the Quizzes/Assignments pages, click the three dots for the quiz and select “SpeedGrader” from the drop-down.   From both the New Quiz overall settings page and the “Build” page where you can edit the quiz questions,…

  • Canvas,  Educational Tools,  Teaching & Learning

    Canvas Update: Grade by Question in SpeedGrader

    Reading Time: 2 minutes With the update releasing April 15, Canvas is adjusting how instructors can review and grade New Quiz questions in SpeedGrader.   Previously when scoring questions that needed manual grading, instructors could only view results organized by student. Now, Canvas will allow instructors to flip between students to grade by question. This is controlled by a setting in the “options” menu when you’re in SpeedGrader for a New Quiz.   Turning on grade by question  When in SpeedGrader for a New Quiz, click the settings gear at the top left, then click “options” in the menu.   In the window that pops up, check the box for “grade by question,”…

  • Canvas,  Educational Tools,  Teaching & Learning

    Canvas Update: Instructors Can Upload Files to Assignments for Students 

    Reading Time: 2 minutes Canvas has recently added a feature to allow instructors to upload files to assignments for students. To use this feature, you need to start in the gradebook. Click on the student’s cell for the assignment you want to upload, then click the arrow.   Canvas will slide out a panel from the right side of your screen. Click the “Submit for Student” link.   Drag and drop or use the file picker to add the assignment file(s), then click “submit.” If you upload multiple files, they will be added as one submission.   The file is now available to be graded in SpeedGrader! Any files uploaded using this method…

  • Canvas

    Using Rubrics for Grading in Canvas 

    Reading Time: 2 minutes With finals just over a month away, it’s the perfect time to revisit how Canvas rubrics can make your grading life easier. We’ve talked before about some aspects of adding and using rubrics in courses. As a brief refresher, Canvas has excellent resources on creating and adding rubrics to assignments as well as creating and adding rubrics to discussions. We’ve also talked about how to add existing (already created in Canvas) rubrics to an assignment or discussion.   Today we’re turning our attention to a setting that’ll make your grading life easier – using a rubric for assignment grading. You may think that you’re doing that by…

  • Canvas

    The Four Types of Assignment Comments in SpeedGrader

    Reading Time: 2 minutes The Four Types of Assignment Comments in SpeedGrader  Canvas SpeedGrader allows you to annotate student submissions to provide feedback. You can use a variety of tools (including a highlighter, text annotation, and a pen tool) directly on the document to thoroughly explain your comments to a student. For more information about using those tools, check out Canvas’ information on adding annotated comments in SpeedGrader.  But did you know that you have options for how you leave overall feedback comments to students in the “Assignment Comments” section? You have four options on the comments you leave there: text comments, file comments, media comments, and text comments via…

  • Canvas

    Canvas Update: SpeedGrader Comment Library

    Reading Time: 3 minutes Canvas is adding a new feature on June 19, 2021, to help make SpeedGrader even speedier – a library where you can save and quickly access feedback comments. Before we dive into the specifics of this new feature, we do need to define a couple of things first. What you typically think of as “SpeedGrader” is in fact two separate things that work together – DocViewer (the left side of the screen where you can see the document and annotate it) and SpeedGrader (the right panel where you enter grades and add overall feedback comments).   This distinction is very important with this new feature – this is a SpeedGrader comment library.   Now that we’ve made…

  • Canvas

    Why Did Some of My Grades Disappear in My Gradebook?

    Reading Time: < 1 minute Let’s imagine a scenario. You have an assignment in your course. Most of your students completed it, and you graded their work. One student didn’t complete the assignment, but you agreed to give them an extension. You went into the assignment settings, opened the assignment back up to them, and merrily went on your way – until you later went to grade their work and discovered you could no longer see the submitted work from any of your other students. You checked the gradebook, and sure enough, the grades you’d previously entered were no longer there either.   Even though this is a scary scenario, this can…

  • Canvas

    Best Practices for Using Essay Questions in New Quizzes

    Reading Time: 2 minutes Canvas New Quizzes have many features that are helpful for administering assessments, but there are some quirks to how this tool works. Today, we’re going to look at some best practices that’ll make working with essay questions easier in New Quizzes.   Make note of which New Quizzes contain essays or other manually-graded questions.  Currently, those assessments do not show up in your to-do list, so you’ll need to check them in order to assign the points for the manually-graded questions in the quiz.   Set your New Quizzes to manually release the grades instead of the standard automatic release.   New Quizzes automatically “grade” the essay questions by assigning zero points to them until…

  • Canvas,  Educational Tools,  Teaching & Learning

    Remote Learning: The Next Level

    Reading Time: 2 minutes Once you’ve worked through the tools we talked about in Remote Learning: The Basics, you’re ready for the next step. These items will enhance your course – they make content easier to find for students, grading easier for you, and improve accessibility in your videos.  Linking Canvas content together We’re going to start off with one of the coolest features in Canvas: linking to items within the course from a page, discussion, announcement, or anywhere else that the Rich Content Editor is used. This is especially helpful if you’re sending an announcement out to students where you reference a page or assignment – you can link directly…

  • Canvas

    Speeding Up Grading with the SpeedGrader Keyboard Shortcuts

    Reading Time: < 1 minute We’ve previously talked about how you can speed up grading and improve your feedback to students in Canvas with the four types of assignment comments and the annotation tools in SpeedGrader. Today, we’re looking at another element of SpeedGrader that can help streamline your workflow: keyboard shortcuts.  These shortcuts can help you quickly move from student to student as well as select various items from the submission information and grading panel. As a note, the shortcuts only work if you have the submission information and grading panel “in focus.” If you have clicked on the document and are in the process of making annotations for a…