Canvas Speedgrader Overview

Summary

This article is an overview of the Canvas SpeedGrader and it’s functionality.

How SpeedGrader Works

SpeedGrader makes it easy to evaluate individual student assignments and group assignments quickly.
SpeedGrader displays assignment submissions for active students in your course.
- However, SpeedGrader displays assignment submissions according to the current Gradebook settings for inactive enrollments and concluded enrollments.
- For instance, if the Gradebook settings show inactive enrollments, inactive student submissions also appear in SpeedGrader.
You can access SpeedGrader through: Assignments, Quizzes, Graded Discussions, and the Gradebook.

In SpeedGrader, all values for an assignment are loaded and saved in the browser, including student submission data, any grades (including original grades for resubmitted assignments), rubrics, and comments. This behavior reduces load time while using SpeedGrader, allowing instructors to grade all submissions quickly without continually refreshing the browser. Advancing from one submission to the next does not dynamically load any updated content.
In large courses, SpeedGrader loading times are affected by a threshold of data points that can be loaded within a 60-second window. This threshold is based on a single submission per student. Multiple submissions by the same student increases the submission threshold. Assignments with more than 1500 submissions may result in delayed SpeedGrader loading times, and assignments with more than 2500 submissions may fail to load at all.
To improve SpeedGrader performance, large courses should be separated into sections, which allows SpeedGrader to display submissions for a specific section and decrease the overall loading time for an assignment's data.

SpeedGrader is generally designed for one instructor role to grade submissions at a time. Because of how SpeedGrader data is loaded and stored in the browser, multiple users should not grade assignments at the same time since each grader cannot view the most recent information for a submission. Updated grades also affect the Gradebook.
If your course includes multiple graders, graders added to a course can be limited to only interact with users in a section and only grade submissions in the section where they were enrolled. This enrollment option prevents assignment grading overlap so multiple instructor roles cannot grade the same assignment.

If you are grading a moderated assignment and the maximum number of graders has been reached, SpeedGrader will be displayed in a read-only mode to hide all student names and submission details.
Learn more about SpeedGrader.

Note: Instructors cannot delete assignment submissions.