Marking and grading

Guidance for teachers and markers on the use of Canvas rubrics, SpeedGrader, Gradebook, and Grader in Inspera.

Important: The Grade Posting policy in the Canvas Gradebook for your assessments should be set to ‘Manually’ so the grades are not visible to students until they are ready to be released. See our FAQ on hiding grades.

Teachers can create a fair and effective system for marking and grading student work, which helps to ensure that students receive accurate and actionable feedback to improve their learning.

• Message students who have not yet submitted their assignment. Use your discretion whether this is a timely reminder in advance and/or after the deadline.
• Develop clear and consistent criteria: Create a grading rubric that clearly outlines the expectations and criteria for each assignment or assessment. This will help ensure that grading is fair and consistent across the class.
• Provide timely and meaningful feedback: Give students feedback on their work as soon as possible, and make sure it is specific and actionable. This will help students understand how they can improve and motivate them to do better.
• Communicate feedback clearly and how it relates to the grade, either through the Gradebook or through individual feedback on assignments.
• Use a variety of assessment methods such as quizzes, tests, essays, group work, projects, presentations to evaluate different aspects of student learning.
• Utilise learning technologies available such as SpeedGrader, Grader in Inspera, Turnitin External Tool (LTI) to streamline the grading process and save time.
• Be flexible: Adjustment to grading and procedures as needed to better meet the needs of students.

Group work and peer review

Group and peer review assignment features in Canvas provide a way to support group projects in the context of collaborative learning.

• Group work and peer review assignments in Canvas (PDF)
• Group assignments: Assigning group and individual grades (PDF)

Video playlist: Karl McGuirk demonstrates aspects of marking and grading with Canvas. This video is presented in Panopto. The videos are presented in Panopto: staff login required.