TRANSCRIPT: Blind Grading in Tests &  Quizzes

Blind grading assessments can help reduce the potential for grading bias, and when students 
are made aware that their instructor is using the practice, this knowledge can also improve 
student belief in the accuracy of their assessment scores, helping them to feel more at ease 
taking tests. 

In the Tests & Quizzes tool in Sakai, there's an anonymous grading option that allows 
instructors to hide student identities. This allows you to blind grade student submissions for 
questions that are not auto-graded, such as Short Answer/Essay questions, Fill-in-the-Blank 
questions, and File Upload questions. 

When you’re done blind grading, you can deactivate this option for the assessment if you’d 
like, to provide your students with more individualized feedback on their responses.

In this video, we’ll hide student identities for an existing Assessment in Sakai and take a 
look at how the anonymized student submissions appear, and then we’ll deactivate the anonymous 
grading option.

To hide student identities for an assessment, go to Tests & Quizzes. You can activate this 
option for any new or Master assessment, as well as for any Published assessment, including 
assessments that already have student submissions. I’ll select an assessment that has a short 
answer question that’s ready to be graded.

When I click the number of submissions for the test in the Submitted column, the students’ 
submissions appear in alphabetical order. I’d like to blind grade during my initial review of 
their responses, so we’ll hide student identities for this assessment. 

We’ll need to go to the assessment’s Settings, so I’ll click Tests & Quizzes to go back to the 
list of assessments, and then we’ll locate the assessment and click its Actions button, and 
then select Settings. 

There are five categories of assessment settings, the one I want is “Grading and Feedback”, so 
I’ll click any expanded section to roll up the categories, and then click “Grading and 
Feedback”.

The anonymous grading option is near the top of this category. Check the box next to Hide 
student identity from grader, and then click the Save button.

Sakai takes us back to the list of Assessments. Let’s take a look at how the student 
submissions now appear. Just like earlier, I’ll click the submissions in the Submitted column, 
and now all of the submissions are anonymized and appearing in random order. Students that did 
not submit the assessment do not appear in this list.

Just click a submission to start blind grading an individual student’s assessment responses or 
click the Questions tab to jump to all student responses for a particular question. For 
example, in this test, Question 10 is the short answer question, so I’ll click Q10 to review 
all of the responses for this question.

One thing to keep in mind: If the assessment question involves students submitting a document 
or file that may identify the student, for example, if students type their name in the file’s 
name, you’ll need to tell students in advance to not put their names in the file or in its 
name if you plan to use blind grading.

When you’re done blind grading, you can deactivate the anonymous grading option to provide 
individualized feedback, such as comments on a student’s application of previous feedback, a 
note of encouragement, or other recommendations.  To do this, we’ll return to the assessment’s 
Settings, locate the “Grading and Feedback” section, and then uncheck the box next to Hide 
student identity from grader. Make sure to Save, and Sakai brings you back to the list of 
Assessments.

Now when you click on the assessment’s submissions, the students’ names again appear in 
alphabetical order.

As you consider using blind grading in Tests & Quizzes, please heed this word of warning:

Be careful not to confuse Anonymous Grading with a separate feature called Anonymous Users, 
which you definitely want to avoid because its irreversible.

Okay! I think you’re ready to give blind grading in Tests & Quizzes a try!

If you need any assistance using Sakai, please contact sakaihelp@durhamtech.edu.