Viewing the Gradebook

Canvas Tutorials Viewing the Gradebook

Instructor Course Management Module

Grades in Canvas

The grades tool is tightly integrated with the syllabus, assignments, and calendar pages. You can create assignments from the assignment page and this will populate your gradebook. Review the tabs below to learn more about the gradebook. 

Gradebook Overview

When choosing Grades from the left navigation of a course, the gradebook will display. Please note if you want to create columns in the gradebook, this must be done from the assignment page. Please review assignment tutorial for more details on creating assignments. It is also important to understand how students will view their grades in your course as well. View the Student Grades tutorial for more information about this subject.

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 Latest Updates

The new gradebook was enabled for ALL courses on May 13, 2019. This guide is designed for the new gradebook. You can see the timeline of gradebook updates on Details on the New Gradebook page. 

Grade Posting Policy replaces mute assignment - Starting with the July 13, 2019 release instructors can select a grading posting policy. This option is available in the gradebook options. The Automatically Post Grades option will be checked by default.  Instructors can change to Manually Post Grades option for all gradebook column using the gradebook settings option or for individual column in the column menu.  The Manually Post Grades will replace the Mute option that was previously available in each individual gradebook column. Grades will be muted until you decide to post grades. 

Update to Grade Posting Policy - After receiving much feedback about the grade posting polices, in the October 19, 2019 release there was change in how manual grade posting policy will display gradebook columns. See linked pages below for more information. 

View the guides below for details. 

Missing and Late Policies - Instructors can use the new missing and late policies to apply a grade automatically. Even if the missing and late policies are not applied to the gradebook, assignments that require online submission with a past due date will display the missing and late tags in student view. Be sure to adjust all due dates for all published assignments at the beginning of the semester to avoid student confusion. Assignment due dates can be adjusted using the Design Tool's multi-tool.

Important Notes about course copy and late policies! When you copy a course from one semester to another, you will need to set your late policies again.  The missing and late polices will NOT work with assignments setup with external tools. Scores will need to be updated manually. This will include TurnItIn (LTI/External option only), Studio video quizzes, and textbook integrations. See the following pages for more details.

Viewing Course Average - In the new gradebook the assignment details (course average) is no longer in the gradebook but can be found in the in the new analytics tool. This replaced the assignment details in the old gradebook. The new analytics tool can be enabled in the course menu. Please note the new analytics tool will replace the current analytics tool on December 16, 2019. See the following guide for details. 

Gradebook Tips

Below are some helpful tips with using the Canvas gradebook.

  • Create ALL assignments from the assignment page. Be sure to include all offline assignments as well. If instructors only add some assignments in Canvas, students will not have an accurate picture of what their current grade is in the course and this will cause confusion for students.
  • ALL assignments will display in the gradebook regardless of publish status. Unpublished assignments will have the text "unpublished" in red bold text in the assignment column header and you will not be able to enter grades. You can hide unpublished assignments from the View menu in the gradebook. 
  • Columns with cells without a numerical value are not included in the total score. As students submit assignments and instructors enter grades, the total column will automatically update based on all graded assignments. Please note this is the default view for students! Students can get a false sense of doing well in the course if you do not update scores often. In student gradebook view, students can toggle between the grade for all graded assignments and all assignments. You can use the new late and missing policies to automatically update students scores when the due passes (missing) or after grading assignments (late). 
  • Please note even if you do not apply the missing or late policies students will see the missing and late tags for assignments that are not submitted or submitted past the due date. Be sure to adjust the due dates for all assignments at the beginning of the semester to avoid student confusion. 
  • Instructors can choose to override the total column score if desired. 
  • If instructors plan to weight grades, the assignments listed on the assignment page should be organized using assignment groups as desired so the assignment groups’ sub-totals and total columns calculate correctly.
  • When the gradebook has more columns than can fit on the screen, the horizontal scroll bar will appear at the bottom of the gradebook page. The students’ names, Secondary ID, and notes (if visible) columns will remain frozen to the left on the gradebook screen. Instructors can use the filter option to filter assignments by modules, assignment groups, or student groups. This will reduce the amount of horizontal scrolling you have to do to see your gradebook total column. 
  • Make assignments titles short but meaningful. The titles will appear at the top of the assignment column in the gradebook. Unnecessary long assignment titles may require instructors to scroll horizontally more than necessary in the gradebook.
  • Instructors can view courses in student view. When instructors view the course in student view they can submit assignments as the Test Student. A row for the Test Student will appear at the bottom of the gradebook screen. All Test Student scores are not included in course statistics.

Below are resource links from the Canvas Community. 

Canvas Guides

Note: These guides are maintained by the Canvas Documentation Team and are available on the Canvas Community site Links to an external site.. Some of the information in these guides may not apply to the Lake Land College instance of Canvas. If you have a question about a feature mentioned in these guides, please review Getting Help page for details on who to contact at Lake Land College.