This guide provides an overview of how grading works in Canvas. Specific how -to information on the sections below may be found in the Canvas Instructor Guide. If you are using Canvas to distribute grades to students throughout the semester, read through each section carefully to ensure that you are using the gradebook appropriately. If anything is unclear or confusing, please contact Canvas Support – Canvas offers 24/7 support options listed in the ? Help icon on the Global Navigation to the far left or call the Canvas Support Line (Call 515-294-4000 then press 2, press 1).
The Grades function within Canvas allows you to maintain all of your grades online. It provides a robust tool for tasks typically done in a spreadsheet application, making it possible to keep all grading online. To enter your grade book, click on the Grades button on the left side. A list of your students appears on the left, with columns to the right for any activity you have set up to be assessed within Canvas.
You add columns to the gradebook by adding assignments. The term “assignment” is used to refer to both:
Assignments can be:
Assignments are automatically included on the Gradebook, Calendar, Assignments and Syllabus pages.
Submissions can be:
Tip: No Submission and On Paper assignments still appear to students on their Assignments page. To avoid confusion, it is best to make a note in the assignment description so students will know whether or not a submission is required and if so, how they are supposed to submit it.
Create assignment groups with grading rules to drop lowest or highest scores. Check the “Weight the final score” box to set up weighting by assignment groups. For example, in Table 1, there are two assignment groups (Reflections and Projects) that drop the lowest score. View the How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups? web guide.
In Canvas, you do not actually type letters into your Gradebook or the SpeedGrader. Instead, you must use a grading scheme. The grading scheme will correlate percentage ranges or scores to specific letter grades. You can enable the default grading Canvas scheme or create your own grading scheme in your Canvas course, then enable your custom grading scheme. View the following web guides:
All assignments must eventually have a grade. In Canvas, an assignment is graded when it is given a point value. It is a good practice to be consistent throughout your course and either assign a point value or percentage to your graded assignments. To enter the percentage, simply record “100” for points. If the assignment is ungraded, no grade column will appear in the Gradebook. By default, Canvas only uses Assignments in the grading calculation IF there is a grade for that assignment.
Students with missed assignments should have a 0; otherwise, their total grade will be higher than it should be. This allows students to have the most accurate representation of their current grade. However, if a student made a zero for an Assignment, you’ll need to either record a zero for the student in the Gradebook or use the “Set Default Grade” functionality in the Gradebook and enter zero for the whole assignment.
Tip: Use the “Set Default Grade” option on the gradebook columns after you have graded an assignment to set Unsubmitted grades to “0”. View the How do I set a default grade for an assignment? web guide.
However, if a student doesn’t have a grade for an assignment (excused absence), then it’s better to not default the grade to zero and put in the grades manually.
Important Notes:
It serves the purpose of calculating the total value of graded assignments in your course. The Total column can be weighted based on the way your graded assignments are grouped. The Total column can be used with the course’s letter grade scheme in order to calculate student final letter grades in your course.
The most common color you will notice is pink, which denotes late assignment submissions. Icons appearing in the gradebook indicate both that the submission has been made by the student, as well as what the submission type is. For an explanation of the icons and colors in the Gradebook, view the How do I use the icons and colors in the Gradebook? web guide.
There are several easy ways to offer extra credit: Create a no-submission assignment with 0 total points and add points to it, add extra points to an existing assignment, as well as the following:
For additional assistance, read through the How to give an extra credit in a course? web guide.
In order for the Total column to calculate student final grades in your course using the example above, perform the following steps:
For a course that gives pass/fail grades, you can modify the scheme to reflect those letters and range (Table 3).
For your customized grade calculations outside of canvas, you can download the gradebook calculate the grades and upload your calculated grades back into the Canvas gradebook. To use this out-of-Canvas system, do the following steps
Note: For steps 5 and 6 you can also use some other method to calculate grades and either import a spreadsheet or type the grades in by hand. Either way, because the custom final grade column is all by itself in an assignment group weighted at 100% of the grade, Canvas’s final score column will pull its score directly from it as an exact match. All you need to do now is customize your grading scheme in your course settings to reflect your own letter-grade breakdown, and you have successfully posted grades calculated by your own algorithm.
As you finish a semester, we recommend downloading the Gradebook for your own safekeeping. Then, upload the file to your CyBox, visit the Save your Grade Center for Record Retention web guide.
By default, students can see results in their Grades tab as soon as their submission is graded. If you want students to learn the grades all at once, rather than live as you are grading them, set assignments individually to “hide” in the pulldown for each column in the grade book, and only post them after all the grading for that assignment is done. View the following web guides:
The Total column is visible to students by default. You can hide the Total column if you’re not ready to display grades. Hiding the Total column is recommended if you are not using Canvas to calculate final grades, since students may be seeing a Total grade that is inaccurate. View the How do I hide totals in my students’ grade summaries? web guide.
If needed, a student may be excused from assignments, discussions, or quizzes. Excused items are not calculated as part of the student’s total grade. To use this feature in the gradebook, find the cell for the appropriate student and assignment, type “EX” in that cell, and then press the Enter key. Read through this via the How do I excuse an assignment for a student in the Gradebook? web guide.
You can use the notes column to keep track of information in your course that is important to student assessment or growth such as student effort, student challenges, SIS (Student Information Service) IDs, or any other general notes. Students are not able to see notes column. You may toggle between the show/hide notes column link without losing your notes. View the How do I use the Notes column in the Gradebook? web guide.
Tip: Students can view their grades based on “What-If” scores so that they know how grades will be affected by upcoming or resubmitted assignments. They can test scores for an assignment that already includes a score, or an assignment that has yet to be graded. To learn more about this feature, visit How do I approximate my assignment scores using the What-If Grades feature? Web guide.
To become more acquainted with the Gradebook:
To learn more about Assignments:
Canvas-led Training Workshop at Iowa State:
In September 2017, CELT hosted Erin Wasson, Canvas Trainer, to facilitate key workshop topics; view the Canvas-lead Grading and Assignments training video (1h 14m).