student group assignment on canvas

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How to Create Groups in Canvas

Canvas allows the creation of groups for various uses. Instructors can create groups for students to collaborate on group assignments, pages, collaborations, and more. Instructors can also allow students to create their own groups.

Canvas has two types of groups: student groups and group sets. Student groups can be created by either an instructor or a student and are self-organized by students. Group sets are groups that you create to use for graded assignments.

To learn more about Groups, check out  How to Manage Canvas Groups

What are Group Sets?

Group sets house the different groups within a course and allow an instructor to create different groups for different purposes or assignments. For example, a course could have groups of 5 students for a term project and groups of 2 for weekly labs.

How to Create a Group Set

Click the People link in the Course Navigation Menu [1].

Click the Add Group Set button [2].

Name the Group Set by typing into the Group Set Name field [1]. 

You can allow self sign-ups by selecting the Allow self sign-up checkbox [2].

In the Group Structure drop-down menu [3] you can choose to:

• Create groups later . Use this if you want to import a CSV file or manually add students to groups.
• e.g., I want 5 groups with an equal number of students.
• e.g.,  I want 7 students per group and it doesn't matter how many groups there are.

When you select "Split students by number of groups" or "Split number of students per group," you'll need to enter the number of students or groups you want automatically created [4].

You can also chose to have a Group Leader automatically assigned [5].

In this example, the instructor wanted 3 groups and chose to set a random student as the group leader. The result is 3 groups of 2 students each. The student listed after the group name is the Group Leader. The group names were automatically generated. You can edit them by selecting Edit  from the kebob menu [⋮] on the right side of the group.

NOTE: The “Require group members to be in the same section” option available in self sign-up and automatically created groups is broken. We do not have any information from Canvas on when this will be fixed. For now, you must use a CSV file to manually distribute groups across sections. Check out How to manually Create Groups Across Sections for more information.

Group Naming Conventions

When choosing a Group Set name, use a naming convention with your course's unique course code, an abbreviation, or some other easily distinguished group name rather than using generic group names with numbers or letters. Once a student is a member of a group, a  Groups  button appears in their Global Navigation Menu, which lists every group in which the student is a member. Groups with generic names (e.g. Group A, Group 1) may result in confusion or duplication of group names across courses. To help students clearly identify their groups between all of their courses, create group names specific to your course.

When using the automatically create group functions, Canvas will use the Group Set name, along with the number of groups.  For example, naming a Group Set BI 201 and choosing to create 6 groups will result in groups named BI 201: Group 1, BI 201: Group 2, etc.

If you would like to give groups more unique names, you can choose to manually create groups.

For further assistance, UO Online & Canvas Support are available.

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• By phone: (541) 346-1942
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• Submit a  Service Portal Ticket  ( opens in a new tab) . This form can also be accessed in Canvas from the  Help  button at the bottom of the  Global Navigation Menu . 

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Student collaboration with canvas groups.

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Collaboration is an important part of the learning process.  Positive group experiences have been shown to increase student engagement, retention, and overall academic success (Palloff & Pratt, 2005).  By working together with their peers, students can exercise a host of foundational skills that can be applied to the real world and reinforce skills relevant to their coursework (Flaherty, 2022).   In a collaborative learning environment, knowledge is exchanged among students as they search for information, discuss, and share options. 

Although working in groups is beneficial, it can be difficult to keep track of everything happening within the team.  Having a shared space to communicate, collect resources, share knowledge and opinions, and work together to produce a final product or presentation is key.  Canvas Groups offers a great solution for this.  

Canvas Groups are collaborative work spaces, essentially a mini-site within your Canvas course,  where students can work together on projects and assignments.  Students can be placed into groups manually or randomly distribute students across any number of groups.  Each Canvas Group will have full access to many of the same tools found in Canvas course sites, including Announcements, Collaborations, Discussions, Files, and Pages.  

Setting Up Canvas Group Workspaces 

Canvas Groups provides a variety of options for setting up your student groups, allowing you to choose what works best for your course, students, and particular assignment.  The first option is to manually create groups and assign students to them yourself.  This works great if you have a smaller class size and/or would like to be strategic in creating groups.  The second option is to have Canvas automatically create groups and distribute students evenly among those groups.  Finally, the third option is to create a specific number of groups and then allow students to self select their groups .  Canvas Groups also allows you to set a group leader for each group .  Having roles within a group provides structure and distributes responsibility among group members.  This helps to ensure all students are taking an active role within the team.   

Group Communication

Communication is very often a trouble spot for groups.  Students commonly complain they struggle to communicate with one another when working on group projects.  Canvas Groups provides a simple, streamlined way for students to communicate with members of their group.  Within their Canvas Group workspace, students can send out Announcements to the entire group and create discussion boards. They can also message individual members of the group, if needed.  Instructors can also send messages to specific groups and check-in on each group’s progress by accessing the group’s workspace.  In addition, students can also create Pages, share Files, and create collaborative Google documents through Collaborations, making it easier for them to collaborate on tasks.  

Creating Group Assignments and Discussions

You can create both Canvas Assignments and Discussions using the groups you create in your course. If you create a group Canvas Assignment , students can work together on the assignment and then submit it as a group. Only one student has to submit the assignment on behalf of the group. When grading a group assignment , you can assign a grade and provide feedback comments to the entire group in Speedgrader. You also have the option to assign grades to each student individually. With this option, you can enter a grade for each individual member of the group, and you can choose to send feedback comments to the individual student or the whole group. This is a good option if you plan to adjust students’ grades to reflect their individual contributions to the assignment. For example, you can create a peer evaluation for students to provide feedback on their group members’ contributions and use this feedback when grading. 

You can also set up group discussions in Canvas. When you create a group Canvas Discussion, Canvas will create a copy of the discussion board prompt so that students interact with their smaller groups instead of the entire class. This is a great feature if you have a larger class since discussions with a lot of students can become overwhelming, which leads to students all replying to the same one or two posts. Creating smaller group discussions can be less overwhelming for students as they have fewer posts to read and respond to. Students will only be able to see their group’s discussion, so it can be helpful to send out an announcement to the class after the due date to share common themes or interesting points you noticed across all discussion groups. 

Canvas Groups makes it simple to create opportunities for collaboration that will foster student engagement with your course material. If you are interested in exploring Canvas Groups further, request a consultation with the LSA Learning and Teaching Consultants .  

References:

Flaherty, H. B. (2022). Using collaborative group learning principles to foster community in online classrooms. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 42(1), 31-44. https://doi.org/10.1080/08841233.2021.2013390  

Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2005). Collaborating online: Learning together in community. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Getting Started with Canvas Assignments

• Last modification date Updated On June 8, 2023
• Categories: Assignments , Canvas , Uncategorized
• Categories: assessment , Getting Started , Grading

Canvas  Assignments  are a way for instructors to provide students opportunities to practice using the knowledge and skills they have gained or to assess student performance related to such knowledge and skills. (Creating an Assignment is the  only  way to create a new column in the Gradebook.)

In Canvas there are four basic  Submission Types  for assignments. The submission types include:

• No Submission : For assignments for which you are not collecting any content from the students.
• Text Entry : For students to enter text directly into a text box on Canvas.
• Website URL : For students to enter a URL (usually to a blog, video, podcast, etc.).
• Media Recordings : For students to upload or record media for submission.
• File Uploads : For students to upload files for submission ( Restrict Upload File Types  will allow you to limit which types of files may be submitted).
• On Paper : For assignments students will submit in person.
• External Tool : For assignments which students will submit through a third-party tool (such as Turnitin, Panopto Video Quiz, and PlayPosit).

Managing an Assignment

Managing assignment groups.

When getting started with Assignments, learn to

• Create an assignment shell with the Canvas guide  How do I create an assignment? 

If you select  Peer Reviews Appear Anonymously , annotation tools in  SpeedGrader  will become unavailable.

If you change the  Assign To  area from  Everyone  to select students after submissions have already begun, and do not have a second set of Assign To dates, submissions from unassigned students will disappear.

• Published assignments are visible as existing outside of availability dates, but students cannot see the details.
• If looking to update the due and/or availability dates on multiple assignments, see   How do I bulk update due dates and availability dates as an instructor?
• If choosing the option to make an assignment a  Group Assignment : If only assigning to specific groups, make sure to click the  X  on the  Everyone Else  choice under  Assign to .

Media Recording  Assignments are not recommended due to technical reasons. Instead, have students submit media by embedding it in a  Text Entry  assignment through Panopto .

Clearly express expectations and criteria for grading by using a  Rubric .

Be cautious limiting submission attempts, as students often make mistakes loading documents and need multiple attempts to ensure you have the correct submission.

• Delete an assignment with the Canvas guide  How do I delete an assignment?
• This duplication process will not work for Quizzes.
• Attach a rubric to an assignment for grading or to communicate expectations to students with the Canvas guide  How do I add a rubric to an assignment?

Accessibility Tips

• Use descriptive text for links, instead of long URLs or ‘click here’. 
• Make instructions brief and to-the-point. Avoid long paragraphs and sentences.
• Consider allowing multiple submission types to accommodate technical limitations students may face.

Assignment Groups  are a way to categorize different graded items in Canvas. For example, you may have journals, blogs, and essays which your students create in your course. Assignment Groups allow you to label and group different types of assignments separately in order to better organize and for ease when applying weighting (see  How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups? ). When getting started with Assignment Groups, learn to

• Add and delete assignment groups with the Canvas guide  How do I add an assignment group in a course?
• Move or reorder an assignment group with the Canvas guide  How do I move or reorder an assignment group?
• Make rules governing grading expectations within assignment groups with the Canvas guide  How do I create rules for an assignment group?

Additional Resources

• CTI Resource: What is the Assignments Index Page?
• How do I bulk update due dates and availability dates as an instructor?
• How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups?
• Canvas Student Guide

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Collaborative assessment: Group submissions in Canvas

Canvas features a range of useful tools that facilitate group and collaborative work between students. These tools include collaborative Pages, Collaborations – online shared Google Docs or Office 365 documents, and Canvas Groups. In this post we are going to focus on Group assignments in Canvas.

In order to create group assignments in your Canvas module you will first need to set up student Groups. Groups are effectively a ‘mini module’ within your Canvas module site which provide students with their own tools for collaborative work. To find out more about Groups see our previous post Canvas Highlights – 2. Groups and to learn how to set up groups see How do I automatically create groups in a group set? or How do I manually create groups in a group set?

Once your student groups are created you can then move on to setting up your group assignment. To do this first go to Assignments in the module menu where you can create a new assignment. For Canvas assignment students can submit a range of content including any type of file, video or audio recordings, or a website URL. You then simply tick the box to indicate ‘This is a group assignment’ and select the Group Set that you have previously created.

Students would then choose one group member to submit on behalf of their group, with Canvas applying this submission to each member of the group. You can then provide feedback and a mark on this one submission rather than marking the same piece of work four or five times, saving you time when marking. Once marks are released, this mark and feedback is then provided to all members of the group. If needed, for example if there is a peer marking element in the assessment, you can choose to assign marks individually to each student. 

There are a number of different ways that this type of assessment can be used, this could be:

• Formative group work – students can submit draft work or formative tasks throughout a module, for example this could be weekly tasks associated with that week’s readings.
• Summative group work – this could include group projects, reports or recorded presentations. Please remember that these marks must also be formally entered into Sussex Direct. 
• Submission of additional/supporting documents – for example slides to accompany a face-to-face presentation.

If you would like additional information about Groups and group submissions in Canvas  these guides will be useful:

• Canvas Instructor Guides – Groups
• Canvas Student Guides – Groups

You can also contact [email protected] if you would like further help or would like to discuss a specific idea that you have.

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Canvas assignment groups.

The Assignments page is arguably the most central to successful Canvas course utilization.

• It controls the columns in the gradebook and gradebook calculations.
• It displays all things gradable, including assignments, gradable discussions, and quizzes. Each can be created in Assignments.
• Dates used in the syllabus and calendar are rapidly edited in Assignments.

Use assignment groups to achieve:

• Assignment categorization
• Drop lowest  n  scores
• Drop highest  n  scores
• Never drop  x  assignment
• Weighting of grades

Canvas creates a group called "Assignments" by default, but you can change the group title or create additional groups. Because the default group is Assignments, Canvas places all assignment types into that group. When you are creating a new assignment, graded discussion, or quiz you will have the option to designate it as belonging to a previously created assignment group.

On This Page

Create an Assignment Group

Move an assignment between groups, weighting assignment groups, video tutorial, assignment page icons, filter the gradebook by assignment group.

On the Assignment page, click + Group

In the Add Assignment Group box, type the name of the group and click Save

Click on the double column of dots next to an assignment and drag to a new group.

Or, click on the three dots to the right of the assignment and click on Move To... then choose the desired assignment group and location.

Click on the assignment settings, then choose Assignment Groups Weight from the menu

Check the box to "Weight final grade based on assignment groups" and then enter the percentage assigned for each group

(weights should typically equal 100, but can exceed 100 for extra credit)

This short video will walk you through the process of creating weighted assignment groups in your Canvas course.

On the Grades page, click on the View dropdown menu and choose the Filters option

Then, select Assignment Groups from the menu

A new dropdown menu will appear at the top of the page

Click on All Assignment Groups to select a certain group of assignments you would like to see

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Facilitating group work using canvas.

Group projects, presentations, demonstrations, and similar assignments can be valuable learning experiences for students as collaboration affords shared knowledge building amongst peers. The following process is a straightforward approach to structuring group work via Canvas. For more complex tasks, consider adding additional guidance and checkpoints to ensure high-quality final products.

Note: Due to physical distancing requirements in our current teaching and learning situation, group work should be conducted primarily online.

• Instead of randomly assigning students to groups, consider constructing groups based on students' availability. You can either ask students to provide their typical availability via a Canvas Quiz then manually assign them to a group or allow them to self sign-up to a group based on their schedules.
• Creating groups via People automatically provides a space in Canvas for students to coordinate their work and allows you to collect one deliverable per group.
• You may allow students to complete projects using non-IU technologies, but to ensure access and support equity, always provide a basic process that only requires IU supported technologies.
• The complete set of instructions and grading criteria are provided in the Assignment description.
• Submission type is set to "Online" and the appropriate "Online entry options" are selected.
• If you would like the ability to assign different scores to students in the same group or provide differentiated feedback, select the "Assign grades to each student individually" checkbox.
• A due date is set and matches the information provided in the course syllabus.
• If an availability date is set, it is at minimum two weeks before the due date.

Note: If the assignment is a paper or essay, you may wish to enable Turnitin Plagiarism Review .

• This could be a graded or ungraded assignment. The intention is to create accountability for progress as well as an opportunity for formative feedback from the instructor.
• Consider if you would like to provide individual or group feedback at this checkpoint then select the appropriate options when creating the assignment in Canvas.
• If eliciting feedback via an Assignment, do not select "This is a Group Assignment." Consider setting "Display grade as" option to Complete/Incomplete for ease of grading.
• If eliciting feedback via the Quizzes tool, select the "Graded Survey" for the Quiz type. Collecting feedback via a Graded Survey allows you to provide points for completion and view student survey responses in Speedgrader .

Note: If collaboration and/or joint knowledge construction are not germane to the course learning outcomes, consider modifying the task to an individual project or presentation in efforts to reduce the logistical coordination and psychological load required in group work.

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Center for Teaching Innovation

Ideas for group & collaborative assignments, why collaborative learning.

Collaborative learning can help

• students develop higher-level thinking, communication, self-management, and leadership skills
• explore a broad range of perspectives and provide opportunities for student voices/expression
• promote teamwork skills & ethics
• prepare students for real life social and employment situations
• increase student retention, self-esteem, and responsibility

Collaborative activities & tools

Group brainstorming & investigation in shared documents.

Have students work together to investigate or brainstorm a question in a shared document (e.g., structured Google doc, Google slide, or sheet) or an online whiteboard, and report their findings back to the class.

• Immediate view of contributions
• Synchronous & asynchronous group work
• Students can come back to the shared document to revise, re-use, or add information
• Google workspace (Google Docs, Sheets, Forms, & Slides)
• Microsoft 365 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams)
• Cornell Box (document storage)
• Whiteboarding tools ( Zoom , JamBoard , Miro , Mural , etc.)

Considerations

• Sharing settings
• Global access
• Accessibility

Group discussions with video conferencing and chat

Ask students to post an answer to a question or share their thoughts about class content in the Zoom chat window (best for smaller classes). For large classes, ask students in Zoom breakout rooms to choose a group notetaker to post group discussion notes in the chat window after returning to the main class session.

You can also use a discussion board for asynchronous group work.

• Students can post their reflections in real time and read/share responses
• If group work is organized asynchronously, students can come back to the discussion board at their own time

Synchronous group work:

• Zoom Breakout rooms
• Microsoft Teams
• Canvas Conferences
• Canvas Group Discussions
• Ed Discussion
• Stable access to WiFi and its bandwidth
• Clear expectations about participation and pace for asynchronous discussion boards
• Monitoring discussion boards

Group projects: creation

Students retrieve and synthesize information by collaborating with their peers to create something new: a written piece, an infographic, a piece of code, or students collectively respond to sample test questions.

• Group projects may benefit from features offered by shared online space (ability to chat, do video conferencing, share files and links, post announcements and discussion threads, and build content)
• Canvas groups with all available tools

Setting up groups and group projects for success may require the following steps:

• Introduce group or peer work early in the semester
• Establishing ground rules for participation
• Plan for each step of group work
• Explain how groups will function and the grading

Peer learning, critiquing, giving feedback

Students submit their first draft of an essay, research proposal, or a design, and the submitted work is distributed for peer review. If students work on a project in teams, they can check in with each other through a group member evaluation activity. Students can also build on each other’s knowledge and understanding of the topic in Zoom breakout room discussions or by sharing and responding in an online discussion board.

When providing feedback and critiquing, students have to apply their knowledge, problem-solving skills, and develop feedback literacy. Students also engage more deeply with the assignment requirements and/or the rubric.

• FeedbackFruits Peer Review and Group Member Evaluation
• Canvas Peer Review
• Turnitin PeerMark
• Zoom breakout rooms
• Canvas discussions, and other discussion tools
• Peer review is a multistep activity and may require careful design and consideration of requirements to help students achieve the learning outcomes. The assignment requirements will inform which platform is best to use and the best settings for the assignment
• We advise making the first peer review activity a low-stakes assignment for the students to get used to the platform and the flow.
• A carefully written rubric helps guide students through the process of giving feedback and yields more constructive feedback.
• It helps when the timing for the activity is generous, so students have enough time to first submit their work and then give feedback.

Group reflection & social annotation activities

Students can annotate, highlight, discuss, and collaborate on text documents, images, video, audio, and websites. Instructors can post guiding questions for students to respond to, and allow students to post their own questions to be answered by peers. This is a great reading activity leading up to an inperson discussion.

• Posing discussion topics and/or questions for students to answer as they read a paper
• Students can collaboratively read and annotate synchronously and asynchronously
• Collaborative annotation helps students to acknowledge some parts of reading that they could have neglected otherwise
• Annotating in small groups
• FeedbackFruits
• Interactive Media (annotations on document, video, and audio)
• Providing students with thorough instructions
• These are all third-party tools, so the settings should be selected thoughtfully
• Accessibility (Perusall)

Group learning with polling and team competitions

Instructors can poll students while they are in breakout rooms using Poll Everywhere. This activity is great for checking understanding and peer learning activities, as students will be able to discuss solutions.

• Students can share screen in a breakout room and/or answer questions together
• This activity can be facilitated as a competition among teams
• Poll Everywhere competitions, surveys, and polls facilitated in breakout rooms
• Careful construction of questions for students
• Students may need to be taught how to answer online questions
• It requires appropriate internet connection and can experience delays in response summaries.

More information

• Group work & collaborative learning
• Collaboration tools
• Active learning
• Active learning in online teaching

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Study: Alphabetical order of surnames may affect grading

By Jeff Karoub Michigan News

Knowing your ABCs is essential to academic success, but having a last name starting with A, B or C might also help make the grade.

An analysis by University of Michigan researchers of more than 30 million grading records from U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades. This is due to sequential grading biases and the default order of students’ submissions in Canvas — the most widely used online learning management system — which is based on alphabetical rank of their surnames.

more information

• 30 Million Canvas Grading Records Reveal Widespread Sequential Bias and System-Induced Surname Initial Disparity (Submitted for review)

What’s more, the researchers found, those alphabetically disadvantaged students receive comments that are notably more negative and less polite, and exhibit lower grading quality measured by post-grade complaints from students.

“We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make the grading fair and accurate but even for me it was really surprising,” said Jun Li, associate professor of technology and operations at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business. “It didn’t occur to us until we looked at the data and realized that sequence makes a difference.”

Li co-authored the study with doctoral students Jiaxin Pei from the School of Information and Helen (Zhihan) Wang from Ross. It is under review by the journal Management Science.

The researchers collected available historical data of all programs, students and assignments on Canvas from the fall 2014 semester to the summer 2022 semester. They supplemented the Canvas data with university registrar data, which contains detailed information about students’ backgrounds, demographics and learning trajectories at the university.

Although the data is from U-M, the researchers say the findings can be generalized across institutions and courses. They are driven by a common design issue of learning-management systems — the default setting of ranking students’ assignments alphabetically by their names.

Their research uncovered a clear pattern of a decline in grading quality as graders evaluate more assignments. Wang said students whose surnames start with A, B, C, D or E received a 0.3-point higher grade out of 100 possible points than compared with when they were graded randomly. Likewise, students with later-in-the-alphabet surnames received a 0.3-point lower grade — creating a 0.6-point gap.

Wang noted that for a small group of graders (about 5%) that grade from Z to A, the grade gap flips as expected: A-E students are worse off, while W-Z students receive higher grades relative to what they would receive when graded randomly. The researchers said such observations confirm their hypothesis that it’s the order of grading that leads to the initial gap in grades.

A 0.6-point difference might seem small, but such a disparity did affect students’ course grade-point averages, which negatively influences opportunities in their respective career paths.

“Our conclusion is this may be something that happened unconsciously by the graders that’s actually creating a real social impact,” Wang said.

Pei said the idea for the study came up during a discussion he had with Wang in which they were talking about their research: Wang studies educational technology and he studies artificial intelligence. He observed that a fundamental task of machine learning is data labeling, also a sequential task that can be long and tedious, but one that is randomized.

It got them thinking about educational systems like Canvas and led to some pilot studies to see if there was any disparity among grades based on the amount of time spent in the task of grading.

“We kind of suspect that fatigue is one of the major factors that is driving this effect, because when you’re working on something for a long period of time, you get tired and then you start to lose your attention and your cognitive abilities are dropping,” Pei said.

The researchers note the option exists to grade the assignments in a random order, and some educators do, but alphabetical order is the default mode in Canvas and other online learning-management systems. One simple fix would be to make random order the default setting.

They also suggest academic institutions could hire more graders for larger classes, distribute the workload among more people or train them to be aware of and lessen the bias while grading.

Li, Wang and Pei have been sharing their research at conferences and it’s been positively received — many are impressed by their work although it confirms suspicions many harbor. One reaction in particular stands out to Li, no doubt an information-age wrinkle on “the dog ate my homework” excuse.

“A college student emailed us afterward asking us to share the paper with him,” she said. “He mentioned that his last name started with W. He’s going to tell his parents it’s not because of him — it’s because of his last name.”

• School of Information
• Stephen M. Ross School of Business

Edward Williams

In addition to grading in random order, I think it helpful to thoroughly prepare an answer-&-grading key BEFORE opening any assignments or tests for grading. For example, “4 points for each part of this problem;” “-2 points for this specific error.”

John Dinkel

So is this proof that students’ work should not be graded in randumb order!

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April 17, 2024

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Researchers find lower grades given to students with surnames that come later in alphabetical order

by Jeff Karoub, University of Michigan

Knowing your ABCs is essential to academic success, but having a last name starting with A, B or C might also help make the grade.

An analysis by University of Michigan researchers of more than 30 million grading records from U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades . This is due to sequential grading biases and the default order of students' submissions in Canvas—the most widely used online learning management system —which is based on the alphabetical rank of their surnames.

What's more, they find, those alphabetically disadvantaged students receive comments that are notably more negative and less polite, and exhibit lower grading quality measured by post-grade complaints from students.

"We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make the grading fair and accurate, but even for me, it was really surprising," said Jun Li, associate professor of technology and operations at U-M's Ross School of Business who co-authored the study with doctoral students Jiaxin Pei from U-M's School of Information and Helen (Zhihan) Wang from Ross.

"It didn't occur to us until we looked at the data and realized that sequence makes a difference."

The researchers collected available historical data of all programs, students and assignments on Canvas from the fall 2014 semester to the summer 2022 semester. They supplemented the Canvas data with university registrar data, which contains detailed information about students' backgrounds, demographics, and learning trajectories at the university.

Although the data is from U-M, the researchers say the findings can be generalized across institutions and courses. They are driven by a common design issue of learning management systems—the default setting of ranking students' assignments alphabetically by their names.

Their research uncovered a clear pattern of a decline in grading quality as graders evaluate more assignments. According to Wang, students whose surnames start with A, B, C, D or E received a 0.3-point higher grade out of 100 possible points than compared to when they were graded randomly. Likewise, students with later-in-the-alphabet surnames received a 0.3-point lower grade—creating a 0.6-point gap.

Wang notes for a small group of graders (about 5%) that grade from Z to A, the grade gap flips as expected: A-E students are worse off, while W-Z students receive higher grades relative to what they would receive when graded randomly. Such observations confirm their hypothesis that it's the order of grading that leads to the initial gap in grades.

A 0.6-point difference might seem small, but such a disparity did affect students' course grade-point averages, which negatively influences opportunities in their respective career paths.

"Our conclusion is this may be something that happened unconsciously by the graders that's actually creating a real social impact," Wang said.

Pei says the idea for the study came up during a discussion he had with Wang in which they were talking about their research: She studies educational technology and he studies artificial intelligence. He observed that a fundamental task of machine learning is data labeling, also a sequential task that can be long and tedious—but one that is randomized.

It got them thinking about educational systems like Canvas and led to some pilot studies to see if there was any disparity among grades based on the amount of time spent in the task of grading.

"We kind of suspect that fatigue is one of the major factors that is driving this effect, because when you're working on something for a long period of time, you get tired and then you start to lose your attention and your cognitive abilities are dropping," Pei said.

The researchers note the option exists to grade the assignments in a random order, and some educators do, but alphabetical order is the default mode in Canvas and other online learning management systems. One simple fix would be to make random order the default setting.

They also suggest academic institutions could hire more graders for larger classes, distribute the workload among more people or train them to be aware of and lessen the bias while grading.

Li, Wang and Pei have been sharing their research at conferences and it's been positively received—many are impressed by their work though it confirms suspicions many harbor. One reaction in particular stands out to Li—no doubt an information-age wrinkle on "the dog ate my homework" excuse.

"A college student emailed us afterward asking us to share the paper with him," she said. "He mentioned that his last name started with W. He's going to tell his parents it's not because of him—it's because of his last name."

The study is under review by the journal Management Science and currently available as a working paper.

Journal information: Management Science

Provided by University of Michigan

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