Grade Book
The Gradebook stores all information about student progress in the course, measuring both letter grades and course outcomes. SpeedGrader allows you to view and grade student assignment submissions in one place using a simple point scale or complex rubric.
Control Grade Visibility
By default, Canvas has an automatic grade posting policy. When this setting is selected, grades and comments will be posted (and thus visible to students) as soon as they’re entered. This also means that students will see their quiz marks as soon as they submit a quiz. This is the default policy for every Canvas course.
If you do not want your grades for Canvas assignments and assessments to be immediately visible to students, change your course to manually post grades. This means that you control when each individual grade becomes visible for students.
More information:
By default, grade totals are visible to students. This includes weighted assignment group totals and final grade totals. The total grades automatically recalculate when you add or change an assignment grade. You may wish to hide the totals from the student view until you’ve finished all grading for the semester. Instructors can hide the totals from students by selecting to “Hide totals in student grades summary” on the Settings page.
By default, the grade distribution graph (a box and whisker plot) is visible, and students can view the summary statistics of the class, giving them the ability to figure out each other’s grades. Instructors can select to hide this graph such that students cannot view any aspect of the graph, including the high, low, and mean scores.
More information:
- How do I hide totals in my students’ grade summaries? (Canvas Community Guide)
- How do I hide grade distribution scoring details from students? (Canvas Community Guide)
When you set up a quiz in Canvas, one of the options is to “Let Students See Their Quiz Responses “. If this option is on, then students will receive automatic feedback generated by the quiz for correct or incorrect answers and show them which questions they got wrong as soon as they submit their quiz. If you do not want students to immediately receive this feedback upon submission, ensure the checkbox is deselected.
When you are ready to release grades and would like for the students to be able to review their quiz and see their own responses, you can select the checkbox after the quiz has been completed, and students will be able to access their own quiz responses through their gradebook.
More information:
- Canvas Quiz Settings (Video)
- Student View of Quiz Results
- Student View of New Quiz Results
- What options can I set in a quiz? (Canvas Community Guide)
Grading Options
Once you have collected assignment or assessment submissions in Canvas, you can enter grades directly in columns for each item in the online grading spreadsheet.
More information:
- Canvas Gradebook (video)
- Entering and Editing grades in the Gradebook (Canvas Community Guide)
Once you have collected assignment or assessment submissions in Canvas, you can view and grade them in the Speedgrader, as well as leave contextual feedback.
More information:
- Canvas Speedgrader (video)
- Speedgrader Resources (Canvas Community Guide)
Rubrics help to establish clear expectations for assignments. If you would like to grade with a rubric, you must add the rubric to the assignment and select the option to grade with the rubric before students submit their responses.
More information:
- How do I add a rubric to an assignment? (Canvas Community Guide)
- How do I use a rubric to grade submissions in SpeedGrader? (Canvas Community Guide)
Once you have collected assignment or assessment submissions in Canvas, you can export the grading spreadsheet to enter grades offline. When grading is complete, you will upload the spreadsheet back to Canvas to post the grades for students.
More information:
- Exporting and Importing the Canvas Gradebook
- How do I export grades in the Gradebook? (Canvas Community Guide)
- How do I import grades in the Gradebook? (Canvas Community Guide)
TRANSFERRING GRADES TO FSC
At the end of the term, once you’ve finished all your grading, final marks will need to be uploaded to the Faculty Service Centre (FSC).
Before submitting your grades, double-check that you’ve entered final marks for each student for all assignments in Canvas.
If there are students in your class who should be receiving a mark of zero on an assignment they didn’t submit, you’ll need to input a ‘0’ for each student. If you don’t submit a mark, the ungraded assignment will not count toward a student’s final grade calculation. You can automate this process by setting the default grade for an assignment to zero once you’ve finished marking — all remaining ungraded assignments will then automatically receive zero and will be counted toward students’ final grade calculations.