Back to How-To Resources

Quick Start
Instructor Help
Student Help

Grading Assignment Submissions

SpeedGrader

Canvas calls its tool that is used to grade assessments (such as assignments or quizzes) "SpeedGrader". At its most basic, this is simply the page you go to to see assignment submissions and to assign grades. There are additional features available. There are two main ways to access SpeedGrader:

From the an assignment.
From the gradebook.

Accessing SpeedGrader via Assignments

This is generally the more intuitive way to access SpeedGrader to grade an assignment.

Go to the Assignments page in your course.
Click on the assignment you would like to grade.
- The assignment must be published for Related Items to appear.
Click on SpeedGrader from Related Items in the top right corner of your screen (see image below).
- Depending on the size of your screen, the Related Items area may be below your page rather than on the right. Just scroll down and it will be there instead.

This will take you to SpeedGrader, open the first student in your roster for chosen assignment.

Annoted screenshot illustrating where to find SpeedGrader

Accessing SpeedGrader from Grades

Accessing SpeedGrader this way is best if you need to target specific submissions by specific students. Note: The Grades page is covered in more detail later in this document.

Go to the Grades page.
Navigate to the row and column of the assignment submission you would like to grade.
Click in that "cell".
Click on the "arrow door" that appears to open the detail tray on the right.
Click on SpeedGrader in the detail tray. It is often the third item in the the panel.

This will take you to SpeedGrader, open to the specific submission (assignment and student) you selected.

Grading Assignments with SpeedGrader

The general process for grading once you are in SpeedGrader for the assignment to grade is as follows:

Navigate to the student you wish to grade (D in image below).
View the student's submission (E) or download for offline grading (I).
[Optionally] Mark up the assignment (F) and/or leave comments (H).
Enter grade in (G).
Continue to next student.

Refer to this image to see the details of SpeedGrader and additional features not included above.

Annoted screenshot labeling parts of the screen in SpeedGrader

(A) To leave SpeedGrader and return to the grades, click on this icon.
(B) The icons at here control settings. The left one lets you show or post grades (this is functionality is also part of the gradebook). An important setting under the gear is options, hide student names in the SpeedGrader. This will let you grade assignments pseudo-anonymously.
(C) These quick statistics show your progress through grading all the submissions for this assignment, and the current average of those you have graded.
(D) is where you navigate between students. Use the left or right arrows to go one at a time, or click the drop-down arrow to select from a list. Icons in the drop-down list will tell you whether students have been graded (green checkmark), have an ungraded submission (orange dot), or do not have a submission (grayed out).
(E) is a view of the submitted document. You can scroll through pages here and read the document.
- Known issues: If you only see one page of the document, try another browser or download the submission. Sometimes different browsers render this kind of documents differently. Firefox is the most reliable for this, but Chrome should be good, too, for most documents. If you do not see the file as a preview, you may need to download it. Canvas might not have a preview for a non-standard file type, such as a Pages document.
(F) The toolbar above the preview let you zoom and mark-up the document directly within Canvas. The tools include a point comment, highlighting, striking text, and freehand drawing.
- Known issues: Certain devices, like Wacom tablets and Microsoft Surface tablets may not work with these tools, depending on your hardware's setting and how it interacts with the browser. Canvas developers are aware of this and are in communication with web browser developers to try to fix or work around this limitation. If your tablet has a "mouse mode" setting, this may improve compatibility.
(G) This box is where you type the grade for the assignment. Just type it into the box and wait outside of the box for it to update. You can give extra credit and award a score higher than listed.
- Important note: Remember the assignment may have been created with "display grade as" Points, Percentage, Letter Grade, or other. Canvas reminds you of this right above the box. For numeric types, if it displays as (/#), that means you should enter the grade as a percentage. If it says "out of #", you should enter the grade as points out of the maximum that is listed.
If you are using a rubric, click the button under G and refer to the subsection below.
(H) In the comment box, you can type overall feedback to the student. Using the buttons below, you can attach a file, or record audio or video feedback to present to the student. Click submit after typing feedback.
(I) Clicking the file name here will download this submission.
If you see a colored icon and a percentage here next to the download link, this indicates the TurnItIn originality report as generated by the TurnItIn framework. clicking on the color swatch will take you to the full originality report. The number is a percent matched in the database. This will open in a new browser tab that you can close to return to Canvas.
(J) After grading, entering comments, and using the mark-up tools, you can use this link to download a PDF of the final graded version, including the added contents, should you need an archival copy.

View the full documentation for grading assignments with SpeedGrader.

Using Rubrics in SpeedGrader

If you have a rubric attached to this assignment, open it by clicking the Rubric button under the grade box (G in the image above).

Annoted screenshot illustrating the parts of grading with a rubric in SpeedGrader.

(A) If using a rubric, we recommend you resize the frames SpeedGrader by clicking on the divider line between them and dragging it to the left. This will widen the rubric area and allow you to see it better.
(B) The rubric is displayed as a grid. Click on an performance descriptor to select it.
(C) You can override the grade from the selected performance descriptor, such as awarding 12 out of 20 points, but having Proficient selected as the feedback to the student.
(D) If the rubric has free-form commenting enabled, click this bubble to give feedback for each dimension.
(E) The total points selected in the rubric is shown here. Depending on the settings selected when you made the rubric, this may be saved automatically to the grade box when you save the rubric, or you may need to type it yourself.
(F) Click Save to save the rubric, or cancel to lose all the change since the last time you saved.

View the full documentation for grading with SpeedGrader using rubrics.

Grading Quizzes with SpeedGrader

There are a few differences in SpeedGrader if you are grading a quiz rather than an assignment. Please first familiarize yourself with SpeedGrader for assignments above, and then refer to this image for some quiz-specific differences.

Annotated screenshot of SpeedGrader open to a quiz submission, labeling the parts of the screen discussed.

(A) The row of numbers at the top are quick links to take you to that question number in the quiz.
(B) Each question is displayed in a frame, along with the student's response. If it was a pre-scored question (such as a multiple choice question), Canvas will indicate whether it was correct or not.
(C) Each question shows its point value in the top right corner, and you enter the earned score in the box. You can change the score given for pre-scored questions. You must enter the score here for manually graded question types, like essay questions. You can give scores higher than the point value of the question, resulting in extra credit.
(D) You can provide feedback commentary to the student on a question-to-question basis in this box.
(E) In the fudge points box, you can add or subtract points to the quiz overall, not related to any one question.
(F) Once you are done grading the quiz, click Update Scores. It is possible to grade the quiz partially, use Update Scores, and return later to finish.

View the full documentation for grading quizzes with SpeedGrader. Note that New Quizzes is a bit different; that documentation is also available.

Downloading Submissions for Offline Grading

If you prefer to grade offline or using other mark-up tools, you can bulk download submissions for some types of assignments, primarily those with submission type: online. To bulk download submissions:

Go to the Assignments page in your course.
Click on the assignment you would like to downoad.
- The assignment must be published for Related Items to appear.
Click on Download Submissions from Related Items in the top right corner of your screen (see image above).
- Depending on the size of your screen, the Related Items area may be below your page rather than on the right. Just scroll down and it will be there instead.

After a few moments of processing (longer depending on the size and quantity of student submissions), your browser will download a .zip file with all the student submissions.

Note: Do not rename the files from the .zip file if you plan to re-upload marked-up student submissions to return to students.

Re-Upload Submissions

If you have externally marked-up downloaded student submissions, and you have preserved their original file names, you can re-upload them to Canvas.

Create a .zip file of the marked-up submissions. (Wikihow directions; an external website).
Find the Related Items for the assignment, as for downloading (above).
Click Re-Upload Submissions.
Click Browse... to select the .zip file you created.
Click Upload Files and wait for the upload to complete.
Once you have uploaded the .zip file, Canvas will take time to process it. You can continue to work elsewhere while it does this.
After time time, return to the Related Items area.
Click View Uploads Status.

This page will tell you which files it was able to match to the recipient, and which files it ignored. Most should match if you did not rename the downloaded submissions.

Note: If you need to return only a couple submissions this way, you can use SpeedGrader and use Assignment Comments to attach it, discussed above.

Downloading Archives of Submissions

SpeedGrader has three download buttons: download annotated copy at the top left, download original submission in the top right, and download comment log in the bottom right. This is illustrated in the screenshot below. Canvas unfortunately does not allow you to download the annotated copy and comments at the same time in one file, nor does it allow you to bulk download either from all students at once. If having an after-marking-up offline record is especially important to you, consider using the bulk download-bulk upload (above) and doing your markup in Word.

Canvas Quizzes does not have an option to download the per-question comment boxes. You can print the page to PDF. It does have the ability to download the comment log in the bottom right.

Screenshot highlighting the three download buttons inside Canvas SpeedGrader discussed in the paragraph above.

Grading Help for Instructors

Video Overviews

SpeedGrader Overview

Rubrics Overview

Help Pages

Getting Started

Feature Details

Assignment Type Specifics

Available Settings

Related Features

Grading Help for Students

Video Overviews

Feedback Overview (completing Peer Reviews)

Grades (seeing feedback provided by SpeedGrader)

Help Pages

Viewing Results

Peer Evaluation