The end of the semester is quickly approaching. As you are receiving students’ final papers and projects or grading exams, you want to make sure the grade that students see in Canvas is the same as the one you expect to report to the registrar through the SIS Grade Roster tool. Here are some details to check before officially closing the chapter on this semester:

Resolve the dashes in your gradebook

Dashes in your gradebook indicate missing grades. Canvas will treat dashes as Excused, whether or not you put “EX” in that cell. If a student truly is excused from an assignment, put “EX” in the grade cell for that student.

If you want a missing assignment to receive a 0, then a 0 needs to be entered. You can do this one-by-one, scrolling through your gradebook and entering 0s, or you can set 0 as the default grade for the assignment so anyone who does not have a score automatically receives a 0.

If you want to see who has missed an assignment before just automatically entering a 0, click the vertical ellipsis to the right of the assignment’s name. Then, point your cursor to Sort By, then choose either Grade – Low to High or Grade – High to Low. This will place the students with dashes for that assignment at the bottom of the column. You can then assess whether to excuse each student or enter a 0 or other score for each student.

If you are sure that you would like any student who did not complete an assignment to receive a 0 for that assignment, you can enter 0 as the default grade. In the gradebook, click on the vertical ellipsis to the right of the assignment name, click on Set Default Grade. In the small popup window, enter a 0. Click the Set Default Grade button.

If you are confident that you want to apply the same grade to all missing assignments in your course, you can apply a Missing Submission Policy in your Gradebook.

Are grades visible to students?

Earlier this semester, the Grade Posting Policy for all instructors’ gradebooks was set to Manual. This means that, for students to see their grades and feedback on any assignment, the instructor needs to release those when ready.

When you look at your Grades in Canvas, if you see any columns with a crossed-out eye to the left of the assignment name, the grades and feedback for that assignment are hidden for at least one student, possibly all students.

When you are ready to release grades and feedback, click on the vertical ellipsis to the right of the assignment name and choose Post Grades.

In the Post Grades panel that opens on the right side of your screen, you can choose either Everyone or Graded.

• If you choose Everyone, all students will be able to see their grade and any feedback that you have given them.
  • If one or more students do not have a grade (perhaps you have allowed them to turn in the assignment late), you can still choose Everyone and when those students have a grade, they will be able to see it immediately.
• If you choose Graded, only students who have received a grade or a comment will be able to see their grade or comment.
  • If you still have students’ submissions to grade (perhaps a student is turning in the assignment late), when those students’ grades are ready to be posted, you will need to repeat this process of posting their grades.

Setting your Grading Scheme (Grading Scale)

The SIS Grade Roster only needs letter grades, not percentages or points. Check your syllabus for the grading scale you told your students you were going to use.

In Canvas, setting the grading scheme for your course is a two-step process:

1. Add a grading scheme in your course.Tip: If you are going to round grades (e.g., 89.5% = A-), you can put 89.5% as the lower limit for the A- Letter Grade and let Canvas do the rounding for you.

   

2. Enable the grading scheme as the one you want to actually use in your course.

Adding a grading scheme and enabling it are course-specific processes. If you want to use the same grading scheme in more than one course, you will need to add it and enable it in each of your courses, unless you are using one of the provided grading schemes.

Remember, after your students’ grades are finalized in Canvas, you must load them into the SIS Grade Roster, approve, and submit them to the registrar. Read the Knowledge Base article about how to submit grades to the SIS Grade Roster.

More Resources

Knowledge Base article: Override the final course grade in Canvas

Canvas Instructor Guide: Apply a Late Submission policy in your Gradebook

Canvas Instructor Guide: All about the Grades tool

CITL Instructional Technology Consultants: Contact us