Anonymous grading can help provide better outcomes for learners, instructors, and the organization because:
- Test-takers can receive results faster so they know the areas in which they’re excelling and areas where they can improve.
- A lot of logistical needs can be automatically taken care of for instructors and markers, enabling them to spend more time working with learners.
- The process is more flexible for markers because they no longer need to be together in the same physical space.
- Anonymous grading gives instructors access to data they can leverage to get insights into the performance of their marking teams.
- For the organization, the process demonstrates a commitment to fairness and integrity.
Ultimately, it’s about improving experiences for instructors, markers, and learners—making it easier to deliver meaningful feedback more quickly—while maintaining high standards of integrity.
Anonymous grading is available for Assignments and Quizzes in Brightspace.
Anonymous assignment marking in Brightspace
When you set up an assignment in Brightspace, you can choose to use anonymous marking. You need to set this up BEFORE any students have submitted the assignment.
With the new Brightspace assignment builder, it will look like the screenshot below. Open the Evaluation & Feedback dropdown and check the box next to Anonymous Marking. In the older assignment layout, you can scroll down to find it under the evaluation and feedback section.
In your assignment list, you can tell anonymous marking was enabled for the assignment if it has a little icon by the assignment name that looks like a person with a question mark.
When you click to see the submissions for the assignment, you will see the list with the student names listed as Anonymous User.
The Anonymous User name will carry over when you view the individual submission. This is the view from the new evaluation screen in Brightspace. The older layout may look different but will have the anonymized names.
When you evaluate an anonymous assignment, you will only have the option to Save Draft. Then you will have to go back to the Assignment or Quick Eval page to publish all feedback.
Blind marking quizzes in Brightspace
Quizzes in Brightspace also have an anonymous grading options but the term they use for it is blind marking. Blind marking does not need to be set up with the quiz. It is chosen after the quiz is finished when you start grading.
From the Quizzes page, click the divet button next to the quiz you would like to grade to bring up its context menu. Choose Grade from the menu.
You will find the blind marking option under the Questions tab which let you grade the quiz by question instead of student attempt or user. Check the box next to Blind Marking.
Now scroll down to a question you want to grade. The example below is a written response question from my Cat Quiz that says “What do you like best about cats?”. Click the question to grade it.
With blind marking, you will only see the attempt number when grading not the student name. Compare the screenshots below. The first is with blind marking enabled and it says “Attempt 1”. The second is without blind marking. You can clearly see the name of our test student “Meredith Student”.
For more help with anonymous grading or any other grading questions, please contact the IDAT team.