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Blind Grading for Moodle Assignment Submissions

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Blind grading in Moodle allows graders in your course to grade assignment submissions without seeing the names of students attached to the submissions. Instead, randomly generated participant numbers are displayed when grading submissions. After grading, graders reveal student names and release grades to students.

Note: This method does not guarantee that student names will be entirely hidden during grading, since students can include their names within the content of their submission. For example, a student might list her/his name at the start of an essay, as specified in MLA style guidelines. Therefore if you are using blind grading, ask your students not to include their names in their submissions.

Enable Blind Grading in Assignment Settings

  1. In the menu bar at the top of your course page, click Turn editing on (green pencil icon pencil icon ). Editing links and icons appear on the page.
  2. Next to the Assignment activity you want to configure, click Edit, and from the drop-down menu, select Edit settings. The Updating Assignment page opens.
  3. On the Updating Assignment page, under the Grade heading, from the Blind grading drop-down menu, select Yes.
    Note: This setting will be locked once a submission or grade has been made in relation to this assignment. You must enable this setting before students submit their work.
  4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save and return to course.

Grade Assignment Submissions Using Blind Grading

  1. On your course page, click the Assignment activity to grade. The activity's grading summary page will open.
  2. Click View/grade all submissions. The Submissions page will open, showing randomly generated Participant Numbers instead of student names.
    Note: This setting does not affect the content or titles of submissions, so you might see a student's name if they explicitly stated their name in the content of their submission or in the title of their upload.
  3. Grade each submission as you would normally, whether through direct entry in the Grade column (if Quick grading is enabled) or by clicking on the Grade Participant (Icon for grading action) icon. For more see Grade Assignments in Moodle.

Release Grades to Students After Blind Grading

During blind grading, students cannot see their own grades even after you have graded their submissions. You must first reveal student identities, showing you student names for submissions, in order to release grades to students. To reveal student identities:

  1. From your course page, click the Assignment activity that is graded. The activity's Grading summary page will open.
  2. Click View/grade all submissions. The Submissions page will open, with randomly generated Participant Numbers instead of student names.
  3. At the top left of the page, from the Grading action drop-down menu, select Reveal student identities. A confirmation page will appear.
  4. To confirm that you want to reveal student identities and release student grades to the gradebook, click Continue. The Submissions page will open, with student names shown for submissions.
    Note: After revealing students identities, you cannot go back to the blind grading mode.