In Short

If you have Undergraduate Grading Assistants (UGAs) to assist you with grading, FERPA regulations prohibit undergraduate students from accessing the gradebook in Canvas and Gradescope. Therefore, certain workarounds must be employed to ensure that UGAs can grade work yet not have access to restricted information. Below you will find the workflows for both Canvas and Gradescope assignments.

Before configuring the Canvas assignment

Assign each student in the course a unique identifying number and share this number with them privately (via email or some other method). Please note that this list of students and their identifying numbers should never be shared with the UGAs, as doing so will compromise the students’ anonymity.
When sharing these identifying numbers with students, inform them that these numbers should be used in place of their name in the filename of their submissions (e.g., 74_essay.pdf) as well as within the submission itself (e.g., at the top of the first page of the document).
Remind students to leave their names off the document or in the file names.

Then follow the steps below to set up the Canvas assignments

Step 1: Enable the Anonymous Grading feature for your Canvas course

Go to Settings in the left course menu, then select the Feature Options tab at the top.
Locate the Anonymous Grading option and click the "Disabled" icon (a red x with a circle around it).
From the dropdown menu, select "Enabled" to activate the feature.

Step 2: To Enable Anonymous Grading for Canvas Assignment

Click the Assignments link in the left course menu, and click +Assignment.
On the assignment setup page, select Online/FileUpoads under the Submission Type.
Check the box next to Graders cannot view student names for Anonymous Grading.
Save and Publish the assignment.

Step 3: Download Student Submissions

Once the due date for the assignment has passed, you or the designated instructional staff may download the submissions from Canvas and distribute them to the UGA graders.
Locate the assignment, and click Download Submissions to the right.
Student submissions will be downloaded as a zip file to the default Downloads folder on your computer.
Share these files with the UGAs who will be doing the grading.
The UGAs will not see any personally identifiable information about the students when grading their submissions. When returning the graded submissions to you, the UGAs should make sure to include the student’s assigned number along with any grades or comments they provide.

Step 4: Enter and Post Grades

To keep the anonymity of student submissions, you and other Instructional Staff must grade all submissions via the SpeedGrader.

Locate the assignment via the Assignments link, and click SpeedGrader to the right to enter students' grades.

Please note: By default, the grades you entered are hidden from students. From the Speedgrader, click the Hidden Visibility icon (a crossed eye) and select Post Grades. Then select Everyone and click Post. Alternatively, you can post grades in the Grades section.

Step 1: Add the UGAs to your Gradescope course

In your Gradescope course, click on the Roster link to the left.
Then click on Add Students or Staff.
Select Single User, fill out the Name and Email Address, then select the Reader role.
Check Let users know that they were added to this course to notify your UGAs via email with the login information.
Note: you can also bulk import your UGAs by using the CSV file upload (including one column of names and the second column of email addresses).

Step 2: Set up a Gradescope assignment

Go to Assignments to the left, click Create Assignment, and then select an Assignment Type.
Check the box next to Enable Anonymous Grading under Submission Anonymization.
Under Who Will Upload Submissions, choose either Instructor or Student.
After completing the rest of the assignment settings, click Save.

Helpful tip: For instructor upload assignments: we advise to only include an ID region and not a Name region for anonymizing grading. It's recommended to upload and match students first and then enable anonymous grading.

For student upload assignments, student names will be replaced with a randomized alpha-number identifier (for instructor and TA view only). To maintain anonymity, you'll need to advise students to not include their names in their submissions.

Additional Resources