Canvas Grading Tips

The following tips are intended to help answer some of the most popular grading questions that come up at the end of the year. These tips may be new to some and serve as reminders to others.

(approx. 3-minute read)

If you are dropping the lowest score from an assignment group, for it to correctly drop the lowest score, all grades within that group must be graded items.

Any “ungraded” items (e.g., an item that does not factor into the final grade) will not be accounted for and will not be dropped. So, if you wish to drop the lowest quiz score from your pop-quiz assignment group, you will need to make sure that every item in your pop-quiz assignment group is being factored into the final grade. Learn more about how to enable drop rules.

If there is a particular item in the assignment group that you do not want to be dropped according to the drop rule, make sure to list it as an exception to the drop rule. If there is an additional extra credit assignment in the same assignment group, you will need to make sure it is listed as an exception for the drop rule to work correctly or else students who do not complete the extra credit assignment will be penalized.

Ensure that there are no “hidden” assignments and all grades have been posted for all students.

Hidden assignments are not visible to your students, so they give your students an inaccurate view of their overall grade in Canvas. Any grades that have not been posted will not be factored into the final grade in Canvas, so if you have used a manual posting policy and have not posted all grades for all students, then your students’ final grades will not be accurate. Find out more about using of the “hide grades” for an assignment feature.

Make sure that all grade cells have a value entered in them, including entering in zeroes for unsubmitted assignments.

The final grade column will not be accurate if any cells are left ungraded. The Canvas Gradebook allows students to view their own grades and monitor their progress. Students can use the What-If Grades function to determine how well they need to do on future assignments to achieve their desired course grade. When grade cells are left ungraded (containing a dash) students with ungraded work see their final grade without any unsubmitted assignments factored in, which gives students an inaccurate view of their grades. Students can uncheck the “calculate based only on graded assignments” box on their grades page to see what their real grade will be.

However, to prevent confusion and misunderstandings, we strongly recommend that you enter zeroes for all unsubmitted assignments. This way, students will see an accurate view of their grades without having to uncheck anything on their grades page.

The most efficient way to assign zeroes to unsubmitted assignments is to use the Set Default Grade feature to set the default grade for each assignment to zero at the end of the term. It will allow you to automatically insert zeros for all students that haven’t yet received a grade for a specific assignment.

If you are using the missing submission policy to automatically assign zeroes to missing assignments: Review each column in your gradebook to ensure that the missing submission policy did not skip over any assignments. Remember, this automated tool will not apply zeroes to unsubmitted “on paper” and “no submission” assignments. You must manually add zeroes to these items. We recommend using the Set Default Grade feature described above for any columns that need zeroes assigned.

For an excused or optional assignment: Make sure to mark “EX” in the grade cell for any student who was not required to complete the assignment.

Excusing a grade allows an assignment to be ignored while determining the final grade. You will need to do this for ALL students who were not required to do the assignment. If you do not excuse the grade and instead leave it as a “-” in the grade cell, then your student(s) will be penalized for not completing the assignment. Canvas will calculate the assignment as a zero for each student without a grade or an “EX” in the cell.

Make sure the extra credit you want to give students is factored in correctly.
For clarification about adding Extra Credit to your course, please consult this article from Florida State University on managing extra credit in Canvas.

If you need to override the final course grade that has been calculated for a student, please consult this article from the IU Knowledge Base.