Anonymous Grading is a possibility to grade assignments from a layer of fairness and impartiality. Without knowing the author of the assignment, there is only a minor possibility to be influenced by earlier results, class participation, conflicts, previous performance etc.

Workflow

1. Creating anonymous assignments
2. Notification of anonymous assignment submissions
3. Grading submissions of anonymous assignments
4. Removing the anonymity

Creating anonymous assignments

A detailed explanation of the Creating process of an assignment in general, can be found in the manual Creating an Assignment and letting students hand in Assignments.

The anonymity of an assignment will be set by the button below:

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In the example above, the option ‘Disable Anonymous Grading after all submissions are graded’ has been chosen. Furthermore, you will have to enter a Due Date. After the Due Date will be passed, after all the submissions will be handed in and after the grading, the anonymity will be discontinued. Another option is to stop the anonymous grading at a specific time, which can be set with the option ‘On Specific Date’. Blackboard will automatically start to remove the anonymity after the date/time combination that has been set.

Notification of anonymous assignment submissions

You will receive a notification of a ‘needs grading status’ of the anonymous assignments in the situations below:

• Needs Grading page: list of submissions with preserved anonymity
• Needs Attention and Alerts modules
• Individual e-mail notifications
• SMS, voice, en daily-digest email notifications

Grading the submissions of anonymous assignments

Just like with other assignments, the anonymous assignments can be accessed via the ‘Needs Grading’ pagina and the Grade Center.

1. Access the anonymous submissions:
   1. Via Needs Grading
      The anonymity of the users wil be preserved as follows:
      
      The name of the anonymous users are all ‘Anonymous Student’, followed by the unique ID of the submission. The assignment can be graded as usual by clicking on it.
   2. Via the Grade Center
      The assignment can be accessed by clicking the arrow in the column beside the title, and to choose for ‘Grade Attempts’.
      
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      Beware: because of the anonymity, all the cells in the table concerning anonymous assignments are grayed out. Instructors are not able to deduct which students possibly handed in the assignment. After the removal of the anonymity, Blackboard will reset the cells will to visible again.
2. Grade the submissions. The way to do this is equal to the general way to grade submissions. The example below shows an anonymous submission:
   
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   You can see clearly that no user information is shown, exept for the referencename ‘Anonymous Student’ and the ID of the submission.

Removing the anonymity

The situations below lead to the removal of the anonymity of assignments:

• The specific date set for the end of the assignment is passed. Blackboard wil end the anonymity of the assignment automatically.
• The Due Date is passed, all assignments have been submitted and the grading for all submissions has been done. Blackboard wil end the anonymity of the assignment automatically.
• In the Edit mode of the assignment, the box in Grading/Grading Options can be unchecked. All the anonymous users will be cleared from their anonymity. After this, anonymity cannot be reapplied!

Proof of anonymous grading

After removing the anonymity, it remains possible to check wether the assignment has been anonymously processed. This can be done as follows:

• Students receive information about the anonymity of the assignment at the Upload Assignment page.
• Students will see a ‘Graded Anonymously’ icon at the Upload Assignment page.
• Administrators and Instructors have the possibility to see the anonymous history of an assignment at the report Grade History or at the Grade Center History.

Extra: give the student a new attempt to resubmit an assignment (while anonymous checking is still on)

Instructors can assign an additional attempt to a student who needs it. The earlier attempt cannot be deleted because it is on anonymous. For this, the teacher goes to the grade center and at the column where you enter the grade for the student, click on the drop-down menu and choose View Grade Details. You will not see the submitted attempt, but there is a button, so that you can give the student an extra hand-in option.

You are on a new page. You will not see the submitted attempt, but there is a button called “Allow additional Attempt”, which allows you to give the student an extra submission option.