Accurate Grading in Canvas

Best Practices for Grading in Canvas

To give your students the best experience of being able to track their accurate scores, upcoming point opportunities, and possible grade outcomes, we recommend you follow these steps.

Setting Up Your Course for Accurate Grades:

plant leaves It is ideal to complete these steps before your course begins; however, they are still applicable at any time during the semester.

First, ensure that all assignments, quizzes, and discussions have correct Due Dates, Available From dates, and Available Until dates. You can use the Bulk Edit Assignment Dates tool to do this.
Publish all assignments that will be counted toward the final score (or publish them as soon as possible, if added later in the semester).
After adjusting due dates, enable The Missing Policy for all online submissions of text/files/URLs through Canvas. This is really important!
If an assignment is worth points but not intended to be included in the total score, be sure to Exclude the Assignment from the Final Grade.
If you are Weighting Grades:
1. Enter the Assignments area and check each assignment group to ensure it contains only the correct assignments meant for that group.
2. Click the three dots in the upper right and check the Assignment Groups Weight to ensure accurate percentage allocation.

Providing Accurate Grades Throughout the Semester:

As due dates pass for other grading columns (No Submission/manual entry, Panopto video quizzes, third-party apps, etc.), use the Default Grade Tool to apply zeroes for all missed work. This is really important!

Following these steps can help you avoid grade challenges due to confusing and conflicting information on the student's side.

Inputting Zeroes for Missed Assignments

Canvas gives students a "free pass" on any work they haven't yet submitted, so as not to worry them with an "F" at the beginning of the semester. Unfortunately, this means that...

⚠️ If you are not inputting zeroes into your Grade Columns for work that students are not submitting, your students' grades are not accurate.

To ensure accurate grade calculations, you'll want to enlist the following combo of things:

To handle all Assignments that are being submitted online as Text Entry or File Uploads, set due dates for each assignment and enable The Missing Policy to automatically assign zeroes to those Grade Columns for you, when the due date arrives.
For each Grade Column representing Assignments that are No Submission (you are manually entering scores for work done in class, for example) or utilize a Third-Party Application (Panopto video assignments, publisher-generated assignments, etc.), you will need to use The Default Grade feature.

Publishing Upcoming Assignments

Only published assignments are calculated into the total score in the Grades area.

In order for Canvas to accurately predict a student's overall grade in the class at any point during the semester, all assignments that will eventually contribute to the final grade need to be published.

As long as you have entered an "Available from" date that indicates when you would like students to begin to have access to the assignment, you can publish it without worrying about students seeing it ahead of time. Students will be able to see that it's an upcoming assignment, but if they click on it, they'll receive a message saying, "This assignment is locked until..."

Excluding Assignments

Canvas will automatically sum up all the columns that you create which have a point value. If you wish to exclude a column from counting towards the final grade, you will need to take action to do so.

Option #1 - Point-Based Grading

Canvas provides an option in the Assignment's Settings to Exclude Assignment from Final Grade.

Option #2 - Weighted Grading

If you are utilizing Weighted Grading, you can create an additional assignment group that is worth zero percent (0%) of the total score. You can then add all practice/ungraded assignments into that particular group.

Extra Credit

To ensure that extra credit assignments are calculated properly into the student's score, we need to ensure that Canvas knows they are "extra."

Most often, this means setting the "out of" value to zero (0) points, but Canvas has many ways to Give Extra Credit.

Roll Call Attendance

When you begin using the Roll Call Attendance tool, it automatically creates a grading column worth 100 points.

If you don't want your attendance to be worth points, it may seem tempting to change the point value to zero, but this will actually remove some of the functionality of this tool. 😱

Here are the recommended ways to remove the column from grading:

Exclude the Roll Call Attendance Column from a Point-Based Final Score

Click Assignments on the Course Menu.
Click the + Group button in the upper right.
Type a name (ex: Attendance) and click Save.
Move the Roll Call Attendance column into the Attendance group.
Move all other graded work (assignments, quizzes, discussions) into one assignment group (ex: Assignments).
In the upper right, click the three dots and then select Assignment Groups Weight.
Click to check-mark "Weight final grade based on assignment groups."
Set the Assignments group to 100% and the Attendance group to 0%.
Click Save.

Exclude the Roll Call Attendance Column from a Weighted Final Score

Click Assignments on the Course Menu.
Click the + Group button in the upper right.
Type a name (ex: Attendance) and click Save.
Move the Roll Call Attendance column into the Attendance group.
In the upper right, click the three dots and then select Assignment Groups Weight.
Set the Attendance group to 0%. Your other weighted group percentages should remain the same.
Click Save.