You spent and will continue to spend a lot of time setting up your assignments, quizzes, modules, and more in Canvas. While it’s true that once you create and assign a graded item, that item then has its own column in the gradebook, have you checked your Gradebook Settings to make sure grades are posting to the students according to your expectations?

By default, grades will post to students automatically which means that as soon as a grade is available–either from Canvas auto-grading a quiz or your use of SpeedGrader–students will see that grade and any other feedback. This also means that, for assignments that you grade in SpeedGrader, students will receive their grades at varying times.

If you would like control over when students’ grades are posted, then you need to change the Grade Posting Policy. To do this, go to your Canvas site, and click on Grades in the left navigation. In the upper right corner, click on the Settings wheel, then click on the tab called Grade Posting Policy. Choose the button next to Manually Post Grades.

When Manually Post Grades is selected, at the top of every column in your gradebook you will see the word “MANUAL,” and when students have submitted that graded item, you will see a crossed-out eye next to the assignment name in the gradebook. The crossed-out eye indicates that the grades are not visible to the students. When you are ready to post the grades for the students, click on the three vertical dots next to the assignment name at the top of the column, then choose Post Grades.

If you would like students to automatically see their score on some graded items but not others, keep the overall Grade Posting Policy set to Manually Post Grades as described above. For the graded items that you would like to show scores right away, you can go to the three vertical dots next to the assignment name at the top of the column, choose Grade Posting Policy, and choose Automatically. This will be the policy just for that item.

Changing your View of the Gradebook

Recently, Canvas updated the Gradebook page a little bit. By default, the Canvas Gradebook will display graded items in the order in which they appear on the Assignments page. If you would like to change this, go to Grades, then click on the Settings wheel, and choose View Options. There you will see a dropdown list, and you can use the option you prefer. The image below shows the options for arranging the order of your graded items.

Under that dropdown list, there are four checkboxes you can use to show or hide Notes, Unpublished Assignments, the columns for each Assignment Group Totals, and the Total and Override columns.

Filtering in the Gradebook

Finally, Canvas also updated the Filters in the Gradebook. Using Filters in the Gradebook can help you see students’ performance on a particular Assignment Group, on the assignments in a certain Module, or perhaps just one Group of students at a time. Above the Student Name column you will see an Apply Filters button. The image below shows the filtering options available.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As always, if you have any questions, please reach out to your campus teaching and learning center. We are happy to help!