Below is an overview of the key features available in Canvas that can help manage end of semester assessments, communication, and grading.
NOTE: Please keep in mind that the following tools and tips are for Canvas only - and that all final grades still need to be manually entered into Banner at the end of the semester.
You can send messages directly from the Gradebook to specific groups of students based on their grades or submission status for a specific assignment (column) in the grades area. The criteria for a message can be based on any one of the following:
- Students with grades less than a specific number
- Students with grades greater than a specific number
- Students who have not yet been given a grade by the instructor
- Students who have submitted to the assignment
- Students who have not submitted to the assignment
- Students who have been reassigned an assignment
For some courses, it is helpful to have a column in the gradebook to represent a grade for a student for something that is not submitted in Canvas. These no-submission columns/assignments can be used to represent a specific activity (e.g. a grade for an “Oral Exam”) or to represent a part of a grade (like “Course Participation”).
Creating a new column in the Grades area still requires that the instructor creates and sets up a Canvas Assignment just like you would for any other assignment - but when choosing how students submit, you will select “no submission”.
Tip: You might consider using a no-submission assignment/column to display the grade your student will receive in your course if that grade differs from the score that is auto-calculated in the Canvas gradebook “Total Score” column.
When you create an assignment in Canvas, you have options on how you want the grade to appear to students (as part of the "Display Grade as" setting). The options include:
- Percentage score
- Points
- Complete/Incomplete
- Letter Grade **
- GPA Scale **
- Not Graded (though not often used, this can be helpful for setting up things like "reading assignments" where there is a due date, but nothing is really submitted or graded).
NOTE: When students view grades with grading schemes, they will see both the point value and the grading scheme value - see image below:
** For Letter Grade and GPA Scale options you will need to select or create a new grading scheme that maps what the grading options are and their equivalent point values. See example below for a Letter Grade scheme:
Tip 1: When you are entering grades for your assignments via the gradebook, typically you will enter grades by points. If you want to enter grades based on Percent or your selected Grading Scheme for that assignemtn, you will need to change the column settings to allow entry by a different grade type (first image below). After you select the scheme, when you enter the grades through the gradebook, you will be able to select by scheme (second image below) or you can still enter the associated point value that aligns with your grading scheme.
For many courses, there are many types of activities which are included in the overall score of the course, but those activities may not all be considered equivalent in magnitude. For example, instructors may have a series of homework assignments in addition to exams - but the homework assignments should not be valued the same as exams. To account for this, instructors can set up Assignment Groups and apply different weights (percentages) to indicate how much they are worth of the students’ final scores.
Tip 1: Assignment group weights can include up to 2 decimal places.
Tip 2: Your Assignment group weight totals should add up to a total of 100% (unless you are using grade weights for extra credit - see the Granting Extra Credit section below).
Tip 3: You can have Assignment groups that are worth 0% of the final grade if you want to provide grading information to your students that does not impact their calculated Total Score.
Tip 4: When you set up individual Canvas Assignments, you can also opt to have the assignment not count towards the final grade. For these assignments, even if they are in assignment groups with weights - they will not impact the total score.
Grade Posting Policies control when grades are released to students. By default, all courses are set to an “Automatic Grade Posting Policy” which means that as soon as an instructor enters a score for a student, that student will see their score regardless of whether or not other students have grades. If an instructor would like to change this behavior in their course, they can change to a “Manual Grade Posting Policy” at the course level (so all assignments will adhere to manual posting rules) or at an individual assignment level.** With the Manual Grade Posting Policy
** Note: If there are grades already entered when you change the policy for the Grades area or a specific column, the grades that were previously entered will continue to follow the policy that was in place when the grade was entered. If you have grades that have previously been posted under the automatic policy, you will need to manually hide them.
Tip 1: The world “MANUAL” will appear in the column header for all assignments that have the Manual Grade Posting Policy applied. If you set the Manual Grade Posting Policy at the course level, this should appear in all column headers.
Tip 2: The Eye-Slash indicator will appear in the column header for assignments that have 1 or more grades that are not yet released to the students.
Tip 3: The Total Score column will show an Eye-Slash indicator next to the individual student scores of students who have 1 or more grades that have not yet been released to them.
Tip 4: You can also opt to hide previously released grades. Grades that are hidden from students will not be calculated into the Total Score that students see.
- How do I use posting policies in a course?
- How do I select a grade posting policy for a course in the Gradebook?
- How do I select a grade posting policy for an assignment in the Gradebook?
- How do I post grades for an assignment in the Gradebook?
- How do I hide grades that were previously posted in the Gradebook?
- Understanding the icons and colors in the Gradebook
Until a student receives a grade for an activity, their grade for their submission will default to “ - “ and that assignment will not be included in the students’ total score calculation. To ensure a student’s total grade is an accurate reflection of their work, it is important to address "empty" grade cells as appropriate.
6.1. Leave the grade alone
If the student’s score remains “ - “, that activity will not be calculated into the total score that the student sees. In the instructor's gradebook export, these " - " grades will be treated as a "0" in the "Final Grade" and "Unposted Final Grade" columns in the gradebook export file. (See more about the columns in the gradebook export file this help article for How do I export grades in the gradebook?)
6.2. Set the grade to 0
Instructors can set the grade for individual students by entering a 0 into the student’s grade cell for that assignment. If there are many students that need to be updated, instructors can do this in bulk using the set default grade feature which will automatically apply a grade to any student that does not currently have a grade entered.
Tip 1: This bulk action cannot be undone - we recommend exporting your Gradebook before performing this bulk action - just in case!
Tip 2: If you are setting a default grade to 0 to account for students who did not submit to the assignment:
- Before using the default grade feature, make sure that you confirm that all of your students who submitted have a grade already.
- Make sure that you do NOT select the checkbox to overwrite existing grades.
6.3. Excuse the student from submitting the assignment
If you do not want to penalize the student for not submitting to the assignment, you can opt to excuse the student. This can be done by clicking in the cell for that students’ grade and updating the status to “Excused.”
The Canvas Grades tool is a useful tool for tracking and entering Grades. Sometimes, instructors may prefer to work in spreadsheet software tools, like Excel, rather than working directly in the Grades area. Instructors can easily export the Canvas gradebook so that they can modify grades in Excel and then reimport the updated sheet to overwrite what appears in Canvas. This can be helpful if you need to bulk update a specific assignment.
Tip 1: Always keep an un-edited, clean copy of your exported gradebook - just in case you need to un-do your bulk changes!
Tip 2: Files must be properly formatted to successfully import into the grades area. For the best possible experience, create an export of the gradebook area and use that to generate your import file. The exported file will already be in the proper format to quickly and easily import back into Canvas!
Tip 3: Although it is possible to create new columns in the Grades area via an import, configuring your import file can be tricky to get this set up properly. A much more efficient process is to create the column in Canvas first, then create a gradebook export that already contains the column. This will ensure fewer issues.
For instructors who want to give extra credit to students, there are multiple options. Some instructors may opt to just add additional points on top of an existing score or they may want to add a separate assignment to post additional extra credit points. Instructure provides guidance on the various options instructors can implement to provide extra points to students.
Make sure you consider the implications of using standalone extra credit assignments when you are using weighted grades as indicated in the supporting guides.
As an instructor, if you want to confirm what a student is going to see when they go to the Grades area, you can do so by clicking on the student's name in the Grades area (or from the People tool) and then clicking "Grades" in the slide-out menu. When you do this, you will see exactly what that student would see if they opened up the Grades area at that moment.
Tip: When looking at the student's view, scroll to the bottom of the page to see the weighted scores!
Supporting Guides
- How do I hide totals in my students' grade summaries? - Hiding the total score from students as well as their scores for assignments groups.
- How do I hide grade distribution scoring details from students? - Hiding the graphs that show students how their scores compare against the high, low, and mean scores for an assignment
Resources
Need Additional Help?
- For help with Canvas, please contact [email protected].
- For help with using Slack, please contact Brown's OIT Service Center.