canvas-grading-pass

Canvas Grading Pass

Work through an assignment's ungraded submissions one at a time — viewing the student's work, applying the rubric, entering a score, and adding a comment — with a confirmation gate before each write operation.

Prerequisites

• Canvas MCP server must be running and connected.
• You must have instructor or TA role in the target course.
• The assignment must accept online submissions (file upload, text entry, URL, etc.).

Steps

1. Select the Course and Assignment

Ask the instructor which course and assignment to grade.

If unclear, call list_courses to let them choose a course, then call list_assignments (with the course ID) to select an assignment. Prefer assignments with workflow_state=published and a past due date.

2. Load the Rubric (if attached)

Call list_rubrics for the course to see available rubrics. If the assignment has an associated rubric (check rubric_id in the assignment object from get_assignment), call get_rubric with that rubric ID to retrieve criteria, rating descriptions, and point values.

Display the rubric criteria to the instructor before grading begins so they have it in view throughout.

3. Retrieve Ungraded Submissions

Call list_submissions_awaiting_grading with the course ID and assignment_ids=[<assignment>] to get exactly the submissions still needing a grade — it filters to workflow_state=submitted and pending_review for you and returns them oldest-waiting first, so you grade the longest-waiting students first. (Falling back to list_submissions and filtering workflow_state=submitted locally also works if you want the full submission list.) Present the count:

"Found [n] ungraded submissions for [Assignment]. Grading one at a time."

For assignments with more than 50 students, note: pace your session — Canvas rate-limits write operations. Take a short break between batches of 20–25 submissions if you encounter slowdowns.

4. Grade Each Submission (one at a time)