Gradebook Overview
Introduction
The Canvas Gradebook helps instructors to collect, calculate, and display student grades. The image below shows the default gradebook’s instructor view of a course with 5 assignments organized into 4 assignment groups. Assignment groups are a way of categorizing assignments based on their role in the course. Creating assignment groups helps to weigh the final course grade. For example, in the image below, essays are worth 20% of the final grade, quizzes are worth 25% of the final grade, the midterm is worth 50%, and oral presentations are worth 5% of the grade.
This article describes the gradebook's settings and organization. To learn how to set up the gradebook, see section Setting up the Gradebook. For a list of best practices to maximize the use of the gradebook, see section Best Practices.
The top of the gradebook contains options regarding the general settings and sorting of content. From left to right, these are the available setting options:
Click Gradebook to access:
- Learning Mastery Gradebook to view a course’s outcome results. More information here.
- Gradebook Individual View to look at individual assignments or student grades. More information here.
- Gradebook History to review the history of the gradebook’s changes. More information here.
Click the Keyboard Icon to access the keyboard shortcut options. More information here.
Click Import or Export to
Click the Gear Icon to access:
- Late Policies to apply an automatic grade for missing submissions or to deduct points from late submissions. More information here.
- Grade Posting Policy to select when assignment grades become visible to students. More information here.
- Advanced to enable final grade override. More information here.
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View Options
- Arrange by to sort the gradebook information by assignment name, due date, points, or module. More information here.
- Notes to enter comments about students that are visible only to you. More information here.
- Unpublished Assignments to include columns with the unpublished assignments. More information here.
- Hide Assignment Group Totals and Hide Total and Override columns
- Statuses to change the default color of the cells based on a student’s submission. More information here.
Underneath the gradebook’s settings, the search toolbars will allow you to find specific students or assignments.
- Under Student Names, enter the name of the student(s) you wish to see on screen. The grades for all the assignments of the searched student(s) will be displayed in a row. To learn different ways of seeing specific student grades, click here.
- Under Assignment Names, enter the name of the assignments you wish to see on screen. The assignments searched will appear in columns to the right of the Student Names column. The Assignment Group columns will still be visible.
The gradebook’s table contains rows for the enrolled students and columns with cells for the graded assignments, assignment groups, and final grades. Assignments that have been set up as “Not graded” will not display in the gradebook.
The gradebook columns organize the students, assignments, assignment groups, and final grade. In the left side of the gradebook you will see the columns corresponding to the specific graded assignments and, in the cells below, the students' grades. To learn how to rearrange the columns, click here.
If created, assignment groups and their specific weights will be located in columns at the right of the assignment columns (for information about creating weighted assignment groups, click here.) The assignment group columns display every student’s average for that group based on the established weights. For example, in the image below, Sara earned a 6/10 in Quiz 1 and a 10/10 in Quiz 2, resulting in an average of 80% of the total points for the assignment group “Quizzes.” The last column, Total, corresponds to the course’s final grade.
The headers of the columns offer different settings. Below follows a description of the settings that can be accessed from the column headers for the Student Name Column, Assignments Columns, Assignment Group Columns, and Total Column.
Student Name Column
To make adjustments to the Student Name column, hover over the Student Name column and click the three vertical dotted icon that appears to the right. A dropdown menu will offer the following options:
- Click Sort by to organize the students alphabetically from A-Z or Z-A and to rearrange them based on their SIS ID, their integration ID, or their Login ID.
- Click Display as to select viewing students’ Last, First Name or First, Last name.
- Click Secondary info to make visible the students’ SIS ID, integration ID, or their Login ID.
- Click Inactive enrollments to see students that were enrolled in the course and dropped it.
- Click Concluded enrollments to see students that have concluded the course and can only view it in read-only mode.
To view a student’s performance in the course, click on a student’s name. To the right of the screen, a window will open. In that window,
- Click on the student’s name to access their Canvas profile with general information.
- Click the Envelope icon to message the student privately.
- Click on Grades to access a detailed description of the student’s grades.
- Click New Analytics to track the student’s performance and to compare it with other course members. More information about this feature here.
- Under Last 5 Graded Items, clicking any of the horizontal bars will direct you to the student’s specific submission.
- Scroll down for a comparison of the student’s activity regarding participation and page views with the rest of the course members.
Assignment Columns
Each assignment column also offers the possibility to adjust specific settings for that assignment. Hover over the header of the assignment column that you wish to edit and click the three vertical dotted icon that appear to the right of the cell. A dropdown menu will offer the following options:
- Click Sort by to reorganize the student grades by score (Low to High or High to Low), missing grade, or late submission.
- Click SpeedGrader to access the student submissions in the Canvas grading interface.
- Click Message Students Who to send a message to specific students from the gradebook. More information about this feature here.
- Click Curve Grades to curve the grades of an assignment. More information about it here.
- Click Set Default Grade to enter a grade for a specific student who has not received a grade or to a group of students. This feature is useful to grade unsubmitted assignments. More information can be found here.
- Click Hide grades to prevent student(s) from viewing an assignment’s grade. If the assignment has any hidden grade, the option All grades posted will be enabled to make visible the grades again. To learn more about grade posting policies in Canvas, click here.
- Click Enter Grade as to change the grade from points to percentages or vice versa.
- Click Grade Posting Policy to change the posting policy for that specific assignment.
Assignment Group Columns
The individual assignment group columns can be organized by grade, from Low to High or High to Low. To do this, hover over the header of the assignment group column that you wish to reorganize and click the three vertical dotted icon that appears to the right of the cell. A dropdown menu will appear, hover over Sort by and select your preferred grade organization.
Total Column
The Total column, that displays the final grade, can be organized by grade or moved to the front of the table, to the right of the student names. To organize final grades by score, hover over the header of Total and click the three vertical dotted icon that appears to the right of the cell. A dropdown menu will appear, hover over Sort by and select your preferred grade organization, from Low to High or High to Low. If you wish to move the column to the front, select Move to Front. To undo this change, repeat this process and click Move to Back. More information about the Total column here. To learn how to include a letter grade in the Total column, click here.
The rows of the gradebook contain information about the enrolled students. Each row will display a student's name, their assignment grade(s), their assignment group percentage, and their total grade.
The gradebook cells are the space for instructors to enter the assignment grades. Gradebook cells will display icons, colors and labels with additional information.
Entering Grades
Assignment grades can be entered through the SpeedGrader or manually (more information about entering and editing grades in the gradebook here.)
Follow these steps to enter/edit manually a student grade from the gradebook:
- Locate the student row and assignment column that you wish to enter the grade.
- Click the gradebook cell.
- Enter the student’s grade.
For more options regarding a specific assignment grade, locate the student row and click the gradebook cell. Click the Grade Detail Tray icon.
At the right of the screen, a window will appear with information and links to the student’s assignment.
- Click the student’s name to access their list of grades.
- Click on the name of the assignment below to view the submission, use the left and right arrows to go to other assignments.
- Click on SpeedGrader to access the grading interface.
- Below the Speedgrader link, you will see the total possible points for the assignment (in the image below “Grade out of 10”) and a text box where you can enter or edit the student’s grade.
- In the Status section, you may manually select the submission’s status. Canvas will automatically assign a status based on the assigment’s due date, but the instructor’s manual status selection will override Canvas’ automatic selection.
- Under Comments, type a comment for the student in the text box. A Submit button will appear, click it to save and send the comment. You may send as many comments as needed, edit the comment through the Edit icon, or delete any comments clicking the Delete icon.
Colors, Icons, and Labels
The gradebook also includes information about the students’ submissions, grading status, and warnings using colors, icons and labels. Below follows a summary of their default meaning –a full description can be found here.
Submission type icons and labels include:
- Assignment icons in assignment cells indicate that the submissions require grading. This icon will not display for resubmitted discussions.
- Visibility icons in columns’ headers indicate that the grades in those columns are hidden from students.
- Manual labels in columns’ headers indicate that the specific assignment follows a Manual Grade Posting Policy. Instructors can decide when to make those grades visible to students. Learn more about Grade Posting Policies here.
Grading type icons, colors, and labels include:
- Dashes (-) in assignment cells indicate that there are no submissions.
- Check Icons (✓) in assignment cells indicate that the students have received a Complete grade.
- X Icons in assignment cells indicate that the students have received an Incomplete grade.
- Excused labels in assignment cells indicate that those students have been excused from making an assignment submission. Based on the gradebook’s default color statuses, the Excused cells will also turn yellow. Excused assignments will not be calculated as part of a student's total grade.
- Color Statuses in cells indicate the status of students’ submissions. These are the default colors and their meanings:
- Blue indicates late submissions.
- Red indicates missing submissions.
- Yellow indicates excused submissions.
- White indicates that the assignment has been submitted on time.
- Green indicates that the assignments have been resubmitted.
- Orange indicates that the grade has been dropped.
Instructions to change the default color statuses can be found here.
Column Warning icons and labels include:
- Black Warning Icon in the Total column cells indicates that one assignment group has been excluded from the total score because the group has 0 points possible –none of the assignments in that group is worth more than 0 points. In the image below, the Midterm assignment is worth 0 points. This is the only assignment in that assignment group, impacting the calculation of the total grade. Thus, the black icon is being displayed in the Total column cells. To adjust this, create at least one assignment that is worth more than 0 in the impacted assignment group.
- Red Warning Icon in assignment grade cells indicate that an invalid grading scheme has been entered. For example, the image below displays a Red Warning icon after having entered a letter in a point-based grading scheme.
- Grade Detail Tray Warning Icon indicates that that specific assignment grade will not be counted towards the final grade.
- Unpublished labels in column headers indicate that an assignment has not been published yet. To learn how to hide or show unpublished assignment columns in your gradebook, click here.
- Anonymous labels in column headers indicate that the assignments have been set up for anonymous grading. To learn how to create assignments with anonymous grading, click here.
Setting up the Gradebook
Introduction
The gradebook will show the students’ scores from graded assignments, graded discussions, graded quizzes, and graded surveys. To start building a gradebook, you must first create graded assignments, such as assignments, discussions, quizzes, or surveys. Assignments that have been set up as “Not graded” will not appear in the gradebook.
After creating the assignments, you may choose a system to calculate the final grade. The gradebook offers two ways of calculating students’ final grade: total points or weighted grades. In a total points-based gradebook, the final grade is calculated by adding up the student’s points earned on each assignment and dividing by the total points possible. In a weights-based gradebook, the assignments are organized into weighted Assignment Groups. The final grade is calculated by adding up the student’s total points in each Assignment Group and allocating the specific weight of the group.
Total point-based gradebooks work best for courses with assignments that are worth a specific point value and then added up to calculate the final grade. The final grades will be calculated based on the percentage of the total points earned. This would be the case of a course with a total of 150 points, distributed among three 50-point assignments. In this course, if a student earns 40 points in Assignment A, 30 points in Assignment B, and 50 points in Assignment C, their final score would be 120/150 points (80%).
Although total points gradebooks are easy to build, they are not flexible enough for courses that might add new assignments during the quarter. In such cases, adding new assignments might impact the weight of other assignments towards the final grade. For example, if a course had 3 quizzes of 10 points each (a total of 30 points) and a midterm that was worth 45 points total, adding two more 10-point quizzes would make the total quizzes score increase and exceed the weight of the midterm.
Follow these steps to set up a total points-based gradebook:
- Log in to Canvas and navigate to your course site.
- Click Grades in the course navigation menu.
- Enter grades manually, through the SpeedGrader or import them from a CSV file. By default, the grades and feedback will be visible to the students as soon as their grades are entered in the gradebook. To learn how to hide grades and feedback from students until a certain moment, see Selecting a Grade Posting Policy. The grades of the assignments with the anonymous grading option on can only be entered through the SpeedGrader and the grades will not be displayed in the gradebook until the instructor manually posts the grades.
- To learn how to manually enter grades, click here.
- To learn how to access the SpeedGrader from the gradebook, click here.
- To learn how to import grades from a CSV file, click here.
- After entering the grades, you will see the assignment grade column with all the grades for that assignment. The gradebook might also display colors and icons in a student’s cell with information about the student’s submission. To learn about the meaning of the gradebook cells’ icons and colors, click here. For a description of the gradebook’s structure, go to Gradebook Overview.
- By default, the gradebook’s final grade will be displayed in percentages. To learn how to change the final grade to points, click here. To add the corresponding letter grade in the Total column, you must enable a grading scheme. To learn how to enable a grading scheme, click here. The image below shows the gradebook’s Total column with the grading scheme enabled.
Weights-based gradebooks work best for courses with groups of assignments that are weighted differently. The assignment grades will receive a point value and assigned to an assignment group with a specific weight. The final grade will be calculated using the weights of the assignment groups. This would be the case of a course that has a midterm that is worth 50% of the grade, 3 reading responses that are worth 30% of the grade, and 2 quizzes that are worth another 20% of the grade. If a student earned 70/100 points in the midterm, 60/80 points in the 3 readings responses, and 50/50 in the quizzes, their final grade would be 86%.
This is a very flexible gradebook system that will enable you to add assignments to assignment groups without interfering with their established weights. However, students might find it hard to calculate their final grade. In those cases, you may refer them to the What If? grade function –information about this function can be found here.
Follow these steps to set up a weights-based gradebook:
- Log in to Canvas and navigate to your course site.
- Create weighted Assignment Groups. Group all graded assignments accordingly.
- Click Grades in the course navigation menu.
- Enter grades manually, through the SpeedGrader or import them from a CSV file. By default, the grades and feedback will be visible to the students as soon as their grades are entered in the gradebook. To learn how to hide grades and feedback from students until a certain moment, see Selecting a Grade Posting Policy. The grades of the assignments with the anonymous grading option on can only be entered through the SpeedGrader and the grades will not be displayed in the gradebook until the instructor manually posts the grades.
- To learn how to manually enter grades, click here.
- To learn how to access the SpeedGrader from the gradebook, click here.
- To learn how to import grades from a CSV file, click here.
- After entering the grades, you will see the assignment grade column with all the grades for that assignment. The gradebook might also display colors and icons in a student’s cell with information about the student’s submission. To learn about the meaning of the gradebook cells’ icons and colors, click here. For a description of the gradebook’s structure, go to Gradebook Overview.
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By default, the gradebook’s final grade will be displayed in percentages. To add the corresponding letter grade in the Total column, you must enable a grading scheme. To learn how to enable a grading scheme, click here. The image below shows the gradebook’s Total column with the grading scheme enabled.
The grade posting policy determines the grade and feedback visibility for students. By default, the gradebook posts grades and feedback as soon as grades are entered. However, you may adjust this option both at the course level and at the assignment level, meaning that you may select a course-level grade posting policy and then choose a different policy at the assignment-level.
The two possibilities for posting grades are:
- The Automatic grade posting policy makes grades and feedback visible upon entry, meaning that a student will be able to access their grade and feedback as soon as the instructor grades their assignment. This is the course-level default option. If this is your preferred setting for the majority of your grades, you don’t need to adjust it.
- The Manual grade posting policy makes an assignment’s grades and feedback visible only after the instructors’ authorization. Consequently, this action would have to be done on an assignment-by-assignment basis. To learn how to post grades manually, click here.
For help assessing what grade posting policy would work better for your course, click here.
It is recommended that you set the course’s grade posting policies before entering any grade. The grade posting policies do not apply retroactively, so if a grade posting policy was set to be Manual and you entered grades but did not make them visible, changing the posting policy to Automatic won’t make those grades visible.
By default, the course-level, grade posting policy is Automatic, making grades and feedback visible to students as soon as you enter the grades. However, you might prefer to have control over when your students see their grades for all (or the majority) of the assignments in the course. For these cases, you should set up the course’s grade posting policy to Manual. This option will require you to take some extra steps on an assignment-to-assignment basis. To learn how to manually post grades, click here. If you wish to have a specific grade posting policy for some assignments and a different grade posting policy for other assignments, see section Assignment-level Grade Posting Policy.
Follow these steps to change the grade posting policy at the course level:
- Log in to Canvas and navigate to your course site.
- In the course navigation menu, click Grades.
- Click the Gear Icon.
- In the Gradebook Settings window, click on the tab Grade Posting Policy.
- Select Manually Post Grades.
- Click Apply Settings
- The headers of the assignment columns will display the label “MANUAL”.
- To change the course-level grade posting policy back to Automatic, follow the steps above again and select Automatically Post Grades. Automatic posting policies are not labeled in the assignment columns’ headers.
Assignment-level grade posting policies override the course-level posting policy, allowing you to combine both Manual and Automatic grade posting policies in your gradebook. It is recommended that you first set the course-level posting policy that better meets your general need (instructions about setting up a course-level grade posting policy here), and then adjust the specific assignments that need a different grade posting policy.
At the assignment-level, Manual Grade Posting Policies work better for assignments that take longer to grade and high-stake assessments, because it ensures that all students receive their grade at the same time. Automatic Grade Posting Policies work better for shorter assignments, low-stake assessments and assignments submitted via LTI. In these cases, the Automatic option will ensure that students see their grades in Canvas as soon as they are available.
If you prefer most of the assignment grades to be posted as soon as you enter them and only few of them to be hidden until a certain moment, then you should opt for Automatic as the course-level grade posting policy and set up the specific assignments to Manual Grade Posting Policy. If you would rather have control over the visibility of grades and feedback of most of the assignments, but there are a few assignments that you prefer students to be able to access their grades as soon as entered, then you should select a course-level Manual Grade Posting Policy and an adjust the Automatic Grade Posting Policies in the specific assignments.
Follow these steps to set up an assignment-level grade posting policy:
- Log in to Canvas and navigate to your course site.
- In the course navigation menu, click Grades.
- Hover over the assignment’s header that you wish to edit and click the three vertical dotted icon to the right of the column’s label.
- In the drop down menu, click Grade Posting Policy.
- In the Grade Posting Policy window, click on the appropriate grade posting option for that specific assignment.
- Scroll down and click Save.
- If you selected a Manual Grade Posting Policy, the headers of the assignment columns will display the label “MANUAL”. If you selected an Automatic Grade Posting Policy, the assignment columns’ headers will not display any label.
- Depending on the assignment type, instructors can choose how to display the assignment’s grade in the gradebook. Grades of Assignments, Discussions, or New Quizzes can be displayed as points, percentage, complete or incomplete, GPA scale, or letter grade, depending on the settings selected when creating the assignment. Classic Quizzes and Survey grades can only be displayed as points or percentages, a choice that can be adjusted in the gradebook (see instructions in the Gradebook Overview.)
- Unpublished assignments will be labeled “UNPUBLISHED” in its column’s header and will be completely disabled until published, meaning that the instructor won’t be able to enter any grades.
- To learn how to exclude a graded assignment from the final grade, click here.
- If you wish to enter notes in the gradebook that will be visible only to you, click here.
- To learn how to post assignment grades with Manual Grade Posting Policies, click here.
- To learn how students will view their grades in the gradebook, click here.
Best Practices
Introduction
These are some recommendations that will help you take the most advantage of the Canvas Gradebook.
- Create the graded assignments. Once your assignments are created, you may start adjusting assignment-level gradebook settings, like the grade posting policies.
- Enable the grading scheme. The grading scheme transforms student grades into achievement levels, like letter grades; pass/fail; excellent, good, fair. This grading scheme can be applied to individual grades or to the course’s final grade. Once the course grading scheme has been set, the final grade in the gradebook will be displayed in both percentages and letter grade (see image below.) More information about the grading scheme here.
- Set a grade posting policy. It is important to decide the grade posting policy(ies) before entering any grades to avoid making mistakes. Grade posting policies do not apply retroactively, so if a grade posting policy was set to be Manual and you entered grades but did not make them visible, changing the posting policy to Automatic won’t make those grades visible. To assess what grade posting policies would work best for your course and to learn how to set the grade posting policies, see Selecting a Grade Posting Policy.
- Add a missing submission policy. Set this up to automatically assign a grade to missing submissions after the assignment’s due date. Otherwise, missing submissions will be displayed in the gradebook as a red cell and a “-”. To learn how to add a missing submission policy, click here.
Missing submission policy will not apply to "no submission" and "on paper" assignments. In those two cases, you should manually enter the missing submission.
- Hide grade distribution graphs from students. This action will prevent students from viewing the summary statistics from the class and figuring out each other’s grades. To learn how to hide distribution graphs from students, click here.
Optional:
- If the course has weighted grades: Create weighted assignment groups to make the final grade calculation easier and to be able to assess and compare the students’ performance across assignment groups during the course. For example, if your students perform significantly better in the assignment group “Oral Presentations” than in the group “Written Exams”, you might try working on academic writing skills. To learn how to create weighted assignment groups, click here.
- If the course has rules for dropping low/high scores: Add rules to assignment groups to record only certain grades and ignore others from an assignment group –like the lowest or the highest. When dropping the lowest score, double check that assignments are in the correct assignment group. To learn how to create rules for assignment groups, click here.
- If you don’t want students to view their final grade: Hide the calculated total column from the students. Instructions here.
- If using Manual Grade Posting Policies, post the grades as soon as possible. Students rely on the grades and feedback from instructors to check their progress and make future study decisions. To learn how to post grades manually, click here.
- If using weighted assignments, add any new assignment to its respective group. Information about Assignment Groups can be found here.
- If using a Total points-based gradebook, make sure that adding any new assignment maintains the weight of all the assignments in the final grade. For example, if a course has 3 quizzes of 10 points each (a total of 30 points) and a midterm that is worth 45 points total, when you add two more 10-point quizzes the total quizzes score increases and exceeds the weight of the midterm.
- If giving extra-credit, post it in the gradebook. Instructions to add extra-credit in the gradebook here.
- If needed, curve a grade. Once the curving is applied, it can’t be undone. To learn how to curve an assignment’s grades, click here.
- If needed, review the gradebook’s changes in the Gradebook History. Instructions here.
- Add any important private notes about students in the gradebook. To learn how to create a column for notes that is visible only to you, click here.
- Message students who haven’t submitted their assignment, who haven’t been graded, who scored less/scored more than a specific value. To learn how to message students based on these different assignment categories, click here.
- Check that all the cells have a grade. If necessary, you may Excuse specific students from assignments. To learn how to excuse students, click here.
- Assign a grade to unsubmitted assignments. Even if you have a Missing Submission Policy set to automatically assign a grade to unsubmitted assignments, "No submission" and "On paper" assignments are not included in that setting and require that you manually enter a grade. In large courses, it is recommended to use the Default Grade option to expedite this process. Instructions on how to use the Default Grade option can be found here.
- Check that all grades have been posted. Identify any hidden grade and post it. To learn how to hide/post grades, click here.