[Gradebook] Gradebook Should Export Manually Entered Letter Grades

In the Gradebook you are allowed to manually enter letter grades if the assignment's "Display Grade As" is set to "Letter Grade". Unfortunately, if done this way the .csv file exported will not include the letter grade. Canvas' explanation for this is as follows: Despite being able to manually enter a letter grade value, the export file runs the calculation based on the point field. If no point value was given, it cannot calculate the letter grade.

 

This is a failure of basic user experience. If you are given the option to export something, the exported file should match what you see on the screen. It's similar to the WYSIWYG philosophy: What You Export Is What You See. You should never be given the option to do something part-way and then be stopped at a seemingly random step. Either allow manually entered letter grades to be exported or don't allow users to enter them in Gradebook the first place.

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11 Comments
insall
Community Explorer

I wish I could vote for this a thousand times.  The Canvas philosophy is fundamentally flawed on this issue.

elisabet_gorans
Community Novice

This is so important: we ONLY give grades of all types of exams with letters in Sweden/Scandinavia - and in so many other european countries.

jorgen_ivarsson
Community Explorer

This is really important for all European university's that use the ECTS grading scale. Unbelievable that Canvas can't export whats actually visible in the Gradebook. If you have choosen letter grades, that is what you should get when you export (or at least a choose to select letter grades in the export). 

NDroste
Community Novice

+1

alanm1
Community Member

I can't even express how unsatisfying this is. What's the point of a custom Letter Grade scheme that lets me put custom values in a gradebook field only to have them converted to numbers? SMH. Please fix and let instructors decide what goes in their gradebook. Sometime a grading column is for display purposes. The grade center is way too idiot proof. It's a straight-jacket

ken_i_mayer
Community Participant

The grading type option should be available for final grades for a course.

Instructors need the ability to choose how grades are communicated to students. Give us the freedom to offer either letter grades, numerical grades, or both. It makes sense that Canvas's underlying algorithms require each grade to have a numerical value, but there's no reason that that value needs to be shared with students.

Instructure, please! This fix should not be that difficult and would win so much good will among faculties and teachers everywhere.

Hiding stuff on a webpage is not rocket science, people.

morrisj1
Community Participant

This is a big problem at our university because our IT department generally restricts access or even deletes our Canvas courses after the semester is over.  My downloaded copies of the Canvas gradebook are the only written record of the grades that I gave, so since the letter grades disappear on downloading, there is no way to settle a grade dispute with a student.  Most teachers recognize that grading scales are generally not set in stone; they change based on the characteristics of each class.  Therefore, there's generally no way to recover a letter grade by just looking at percentages.

This is yet another example of a serious flaw with the program that should be very easy to fix, and yet Canvas declines to do so. 

dsheil1
Community Explorer

Its a fundamental need, should already exist.

HectorFlores
Community Member

I agree with what is being asked here for Instructure Canvas to do. I have the same need, and I am flabbergasted that Instructure Canvas gets away with disregarding its customers' needs. Most questions that I've had about a feature that Canvas should support end up with the same answer: "Canvas will not do it". If it were up to me, I would have "fired" Instructure Canvas long ago simply for their abysmal customer service attitude and performance. Three people have complained against Instructure in the Better Business Bureau. After writing a request here, we all should put complaints against Instructure with the BBB, even Instructure is not BBB accredited. Potential customers should know ahead of time of what they're getting themselves into with Instructure Canvas. Also, some organization should be evaluating and grading Instructure Canvas' customer service performance on an ongoing basis.

kajsa_nalin
Community Member

This feature not being implemented is causing so much frustration because of all the extra administration it means as a teacher.