The grading queue

The grading queue is the backlog: every learner attempt that has been submitted and is still waiting on a human. It pulls work from everywhere learners can be marked — assessments, lesson plans, programs, and standards-linked resources — into one list, so a grader opens one page instead of hunting through courses.

This article is about the queue — finding the right work, claiming it, resolving disagreements between reviewers, and releasing results. For what happens once you open a single attempt (scoring, rubrics, comments, voice notes), see Grading & feedback.

What this does

Grading queue in your navigation opens the central queue. It lists submitted attempts that aren’t finished yet, oldest first, so a backlog drains in the order learners handed work in. Everything is scoped to your organization and narrowed again by what you’re allowed to see, so two graders looking at the same page can legitimately see different rows.

The same queue also appears inside the thing being graded — on an assessment’s Grading tab and on a program’s Grading view. Those embedded copies are scoped to that one owner and carry an Open in central queue link that keeps the scope when you jump out.

Before you start

You need permission to record grades. Without it the Grading queue entry doesn’t appear in your navigation and the page won’t open.
There must be submitted work. Attempts only enter the queue once a learner submits; drafts and in-progress attempts don’t.
If you want multi-reviewer or moderated marking, set the grading policy on the assessment first — see Building an assessment.

Find the work you want

Open Grading queue. If your account spans several organizations, pick one from the selector first.
Use the scope chips — All, Assessments, Lesson plans, Programs, Standards — to narrow by where the work came from. Each chip carries a count of outstanding attempts across the whole organization, not just the page you’re looking at, and the counts don’t shift when you switch chips.
Use the tabs to choose a workflow phase: All, Assigned to me, Moderation (only if you can moderate), and Graded. The scope chips narrow All, Moderation, and Graded; Assigned to me always lists every pass assigned to you.
Search by learner, item title, or attempt to jump straight to something.
Toggle Show archived if you need attempts belonging to an archived or deleted assessment. It’s off by default so the queue stays focused on live work.

The list pages 25 at a time, with a footer showing which page you’re on and the total. Seed and fixture rows are hidden automatically, and a line under the list tells you how many were hidden with a Show test data control to bring them back. Empty states tell you why it’s empty: no matches for your search, nothing in the chip you picked, or genuinely nothing to grade.

Claim work assigned to you

When an item uses a multi-pass grading policy, individual passes — first mark, second mark, moderation — get assigned to named reviewers.

Open the Assigned to me tab. Each row shows the pass you’re responsible for, a due date (overdue shows in red), and whether the pass is Blind.
Press Start grading. If the pass is still unclaimed this claims it for you first, then opens the attempt.
Grade and submit. Your mark is recorded against your pass, and the policy decides how it combines with the other passes.

Blind means you can’t see other reviewers’ scores until you’ve submitted your own — it keeps each judgement independent. Reviewers are notified when a pass is assigned to them; the notice arrives in the app. See Notification inbox.

Assignments are created from inside an attempt, in the Reviewers panel, by someone with permission to manage grading assignments. The panel only appears when the item carries a grading policy with defined passes — with no policy there’s nothing to assign.

Resolve moderation

The Moderation tab narrows the queue to attempts where reviewers disagreed. An attempt is flagged when the grading policy sets a “flag for moderation when scores differ by” threshold and two live passes come in further apart than that. Rows in this tab carry a Scores diverge marker.

A flagged attempt cannot be released until the disagreement is resolved. How it resolves depends on the acceptance rule chosen on the assessment: under moderator decision a mark on the final pass settles it; under highest, average, first pass, or last pass the rule picks the score and the flag clears once the marks no longer diverge past the threshold; under unanimous the attempt stays unresolved until reviewers actually agree. If a required pass has no mark at all, the attempt isn’t resolvable and can’t be released.

Release results

Releasing is what makes a score and its feedback visible to the learner. It also sends them an in-app notification, recomputes their progress state for that item, and writes an audit record of the release. See Notification inbox.

Two guards always apply: the attempt must have a score, and it must not be flagged for moderation. When either fails, the Release button is disabled and hovering it explains why.

Submit & release — appears once every item on the attempt is scored, and does both in one step.
Submit grade, then Release — grade now, publish later. Useful when you want a whole cohort to see results at the same moment.
The Graded tab lists released attempts, most recent first. Opening one is read-only; if you can record grades you’ll see Edit grades, and re-grading writes a new grading record rather than overwriting the earlier one.

The assessment-scoped queue under Assessments → Grading & Review works one assessment at a time: pick an assessment, and its work is grouped into Pending review, Ready to release, and Released. The Ready to release group carries a Release all button, and confirming it first shows how many learners will be notified along with a sample of the results in the batch.

How this shows up in Insights

Two reports in the certified catalogue track the same backlog from the reporting side:

Grading Queue — a single number: submitted attempts still waiting to be graded.
Attempts by Status — every learner attempt broken down by grading status.

Both are aimed at instructors and admins, and both carry the Certified badge. See Reporting & Insights.

Reference

Term	What it is
Attempt	One learner’s submission of one gradable item — the unit the queue lists
Scope chip	Filter by where the work came from: assessments, lesson plans, programs, standards
Pass	One round of marking (first mark, second mark, moderation) defined by the grading policy
Assignment	A named reviewer made responsible for one pass, with an optional due date
Blind	The reviewer can’t see other marks until they submit their own
Needs moderation	Two passes diverged beyond the policy’s threshold; release is blocked
Acceptance rule	How the policy turns several passes into one final score
Release	Publishing the score and feedback to the learner
Graded tab	Released attempts, read-only unless you re-open them to edit

Troubleshooting

Grading queue isn’t in my navigation. You need permission to record grades. Organization admins, instructors, facilitators, and reviewers hold it by default; other roles don’t. See Roles & permissions.

There’s no Moderation tab. That tab only renders for people who can moderate grading records — admins and reviewers by default. Without it you can still grade; you just can’t settle divergent marks.

Release is greyed out. Either the attempt has no score yet, or it’s flagged for moderation. Score every item, or resolve the divergence, and the button unlocks. Release all on the assessment-scoped queue processes each result independently, so one blocked result doesn’t stop the rest of the batch.

An attempt I expected isn’t listed. Check three things: the learner submitted rather than leaving a draft, your scope chip or search isn’t excluding it, and the owning assessment isn’t archived — archived work is hidden until you switch on Show archived.

Learner names show as “Learner 3” instead of real names. The item’s grading policy is set to anonymous marking. Identities reveal according to the policy — on release, when the marking window closes, or never — so the queue and the attempt view always agree.

Someone else graded it while I had it open. Lurno detects the clash on submit and offers to reload so you see the latest marks instead of silently overwriting them.