Accessing and marking submissions

To access Canvas follow the steps below:

  • Go to canvas.manchester.ac.uk .
  • Login with your University username and password if prompted.
  • Canvas will be default open on the Dashboard (which only displays 20 courses).
  • In the Global Navigation menu, click on Courses>All courses to view all courses you are enrolled on.
  • Open the relevant course unit.

SpeedGrader allows you to annotate/add inline comments to written submissions, complete a marking rubric (if appropriate) and also add feedback in a variety of other ways (eg. speech to text recognition, record/upload media, add a file attachment).

Go to the Marking and feedback guidance if you need further information about marking with SpeedGrader and using rubrics.

All assignments in Canvas, will appear under the Assignments menu within a course unit.

In Blackboard, students were allocated to ‘marking groups’. In Canvas marking groups are replaced by ‘sections‘. Sections can be hidden from students so they do not see which section they have been allocated to. Staff can filter the marking interface (SpeedGrader) by section, to view the students they need to mark.

If students have been allocated to sections, you can view these sections via the Canvas Gradebook, by following the steps below:

  • Open the Grades menu to view Canvas Gradebook.
  • Click on Apply Filters, then select Sections.
  • Next click on the name of the section you wish to display.

  • Across the top of the Gradebook you will see the name of the section that has been applied.
  • To remove a filter from the Gradebook click the drop down arrow next to the filter applied and then Remove section.
  • If section membership is incorrect and students need to be added or removed, please notify your programme team in the first instance.

We recommend that you always access assignments via the assignments menu.

  • Open the Assignments menu.
  • Locate the relevant assignment and click the assignment title to open the assignment settings.
  • Click on the SpeedGrader link to open the marking interface.
  • SpeedGrader will open displaying all students. If anonymous marking is enabled, then pseudonyms will be shown in place of names.
  • Click on the drop down arrow next to the ‘student name / pseudonym’ on the purple menu bar.
  • A new menu should appear indicating which section is displayed. By default Speed Grader shows ‘All Sections when first used, but may subsequently remember the last section selected.
  • To view a drop down list of all sections, hover your mouse over the section currently displayed. A drop down menu should appear to the left, where you can see a full list of sections.
  • In the dropdown locate the relevant section name eg. 1st, Surname, Initial and click the section name to select it. When a new section is selected, the SpeedGrader window will refresh and you should notice the number of students displayed changes to display only the students in the selected section.

Once you have identified the students you need to mark, you can begin to add feedback to the submissions.
See Marking and feedback guidance if you need further information about marking within SpeedGrader and using rubrics.

Turnitin Similarity reports can be accessed via the SpeedGrader marking interface, a similarity score will display in a panel to the right of a students submission.

To access a Turnitin Similarity report via SpeedGrader follow the steps below:

  • Open the Assignments menu.
  • Locate the relevant assignment and click the assignment title to open the assignment settings.
  • Next, click on the SpeedGrader link.
  • Locate the relevant student submission.
  • Click on the Similarity Report score (coloured box with percentage) to open the report in a new window.
  • Within Turnitin Feedback Studio you can also download a copy of the similarity report, if you need to share this with other markers.

Further support:

In Canvas you can bulk download all submissions for an assignment, via Canvas Gradebook. For step by step instructions see: How do I download all student submissions for an assignment?

If you wish to download individual assignments, then you will need to the relevant student within SpeedGrader. Once you have located the relevant assignment, you should see a download button available next to the submitted file in the marking panel.

For courses that require first and second markers to mark independently within Canvas, two inboxes will be used. Each submission inbox will have an associated column within Canvas Gradebook.

Staff will only be able to view and download marks from Canvas Gradebook, if anonymous marking is disabled. Therefore, programme teams may wish to choose a date to disable anonymous marking once initial marking is completed and optionally choose to export grades.

  • To remove anonymous marking, simply open the assignment, click Edit the assignment, remove the tick from the checkbox ‘Graders cannot view student names’ and Save the changes.
  • How do I export grades in the Gradebook.

For courses that wish to release an agreed mark via Canvas, an additional column can be created by the eLearning team in Canvas Gradebook. Existing data from the Canvas Gradebook can be downloaded, an agreed mark calculated offline and then reuploaded.