Apply Missing Submission Policy to all Assignment Types

(18)

Currently, the missing submission policy only applies to "online" assignment types.  Assignments of type "No Submission" and "On Paper" are ignored by this policy.

It would be great if this policy worked on all assignment types across the board.

What's the use case?

As currently implemented, the "missing submissions" option does not state that it only works on certain assignment types. Users will look at this, and assume that it applies to all assignment types.  When it comes to final grade calculations, this will then cause additional headaches.

Why is this important?

When syncing grades to SIS, and possibly for other grade calculations, it's important to have the desired value listed in the gradebook for missing assignments.  Using the "Default Grade" option on a per assignment basis is not intuitive nor streamlined for a Teacher.  Since Canvas determined that the new gradebook intentionally does not support the "Treat Ungraded Items as 0" option, teachers have no way to mimic this behavior with the new gradebook and the missing submissions policy.

See: https://community.canvaslms.com/message/141188-re-new-gradebook-treat-ungraded-as-zero 

37 Comments
erinhmcmillan
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hi, Aaron,

Would you mind sharing your use case so our product team knows why this functionality is important to you?

Thanks,

Erin

axelsena
Community Contributor

I feel this was fairly self explanatory, but I did added some additional information.

--Aaron

ChrisMedina
Community Participant

This should be more of a fix than a feature request. 

degensp28
Community Participant

While I agree with you, Instructure has reported this as "Intended Behaviour", thereby making it a feature request.

erinhmcmillan
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Thanks, Aaron! Our product manager is going to do some investigating. Thanks for sharing more details with us.

Erin

ChrisMedina
Community Participant

They tend to say that when they don't want to fix something they screwed up. 

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

Actually, helpdesk, Shane is correct.  The feature was intentionally developed to apply only to online assignments after reading use cases within feature ideas and numerous site visits and interviews with other instructors.  There are many instructors that voiced concerns if the missing policy were applied to other submission types because of time between the due date, collecting an assignment, and grading it, as well as other reasons.  This is why Erin (above) asked for more use cases to support this idea.  We sincerely want to know more about this so that we can evaluate if the feature needs to be adjusted or not.  It's not a bug or a mistake.

ChrisMedina
Community Participant

there should be no reason why on paper shouldn't be included in this as well. and making users jump through the hoops of feature requests seems silly when it should just be reviewed by development. There seems to be a disconnect between developers and people who actually use the product. Lets just all hope there is enough votes so it actually gets some attention.  

degensp28
Community Participant

I agree completely Chris.  The reasons provided are a cop out that only show there wasn't effort put into considering the concern.  How is it that not one person at least pointed out the total lack of explanation in the tool itself about how this functions?  If instructors really were worried about that issue how is it that not one person thought to make an additional checkbox to have it apply to other assignments?  How is it that not one person thought to have a field where you can set a reasonable delay for how long it will take to grade the assignment?  This might not be a mistake or a bug, but it certainly wasn't done well.

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

helpdesk‌ &  @degensp28 ‌

We strongly value opinion in this Community, but both of you are mixing in assumptions here and presenting them as fact.  Please be careful in doing that, because we also strongly value accuracy.  You can read more in the Community guidelines if you'd like.

Also, here are a couple other feature ideas related to this subject that might help you see this from the perspective of other users.

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/9339-missing-label-placed-incorrectlysubmission-on-paper-and-o...

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/9511-allow-missing-label-to-be-enableddisabled-by-choice?sr=se...

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/10605-a-global-option-to-enabledisable-missing-and-late-status...

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/9693-roll-missing-label-in-gradebook-back-to-beta?sr=search&se...

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/9172-no-missing-label-for-zero-point-assignments?sr=search&sea...

degensp28
Community Participant

You are right, and I apologize for the assumptions.  I would be delighted to hear about some of the solutions that were considered and the reasoning as to why those solutions were ruled out as tenable.  It would greatly help in steering this conversation back into the realm of useful forward progress in addressing a perceived issue with the intended functionality of a tool.

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

Thank you, Shane.  Appreciate that!

Please read through the other ideas I linked to.  You'll see how the tool was initially released applying to all assignments and then was pulled back, refined, and released as it is today.  

ChrisMedina
Community Participant

Sorry sometime my military side kicks in and the "Just make it happen" takes over. Smiley Wink 

Maybe putting a note in the guide explaining that it wont work with on paper assignments would help. Even after seeing the threads I still don't see why it can't be done. 

degensp28
Community Participant

I appreciate the reading material.

Missing Label Placed Incorrectly/Submission on paper and online option: The crux of the conversation here is around wanting to give instructors the ability to choose how these systems apply to the various types of assignments.  Quotes like "This should really be pulled out, or become a feature faculty can CHOOSE to enable or not." and "This may help some, but it causes problems for a much larger number of teachers than it will help. There needs to be a way for the instructor to turn this label off when it is manually graded." pop out at me.  Rather than providing that choice, the option for On Paper and No Submission are just not available.

Allow "Missing" label to be enabled/disabled: This is just about allowing the Missing label to be enable or disabled.  The ability to toggle functionality on and off is always a good idea, and not something I have seen pushed back against by users in this or any threads.  The issue here is about being able to turn it on for more things.  I want what this thread wants.  I just want it for On Paper and No Submission types as well (where this thread does not call out any types one way or the other).

A global option to enable/disable Missing and Late Status labels in the New Gradebook: My comments for this thread are identical to my comments for the above thread.  

Roll Missing label in Gradebook back to Beta: Again, while the conversation is slightly different, the major takeaway is that instructors need to be provided the choice on what these labels apply to.  Yet again I am asking that that choice be extended to each assignment type.

No MISSING label for zero-point assignments: This is another discussion about why the "MISSING" label should not be locked on.  Which to reiterate, I agree with.

I agree with the direction all of these threads are pushing in.  These users are looking for more flexibility in how the tool works, allowing them to be given an option of what is marked as missing, rather than having the "MISSING" label be applied wholesale.  It is great that there is an option to toggle that on and off.  It is "as intended" that this can not be turned on for No Submission and On Paper assignments.  Are there any discussions you can help lead me to to shed some light on why those were not provided the same opportunity these threads were asking for?

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

I looked for idea submissions on that exact subject, Shane, and didn't find them, or I would have also included them in the list.  If you find any, please link them here.  I'm not in favor of one implementation over another, just sharing the feedback we've received!  

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

I do think that's a great note to share with our documentation friends and I'll pass that along right now!

degensp28
Community Participant

I apologize for being unclear in my other post requesting to hear about potential solutions and reasons they were not included in the current implementation.  My point is that I do not see any of those, which is why I asked about them in the first place.  Perhaps the development team would have insights as to why this is the intended function.  You rightly pointed out that I leaped to the assumption that this concern was just not considered, and I would much rather learn about those considerations than continue to hold a false assumption. 

rscheb
Community Novice

Is there any update on this? Could you just return the "treat ungraded as zero" to the full gradebook page (instead of just within the Individual Page)? Then, wouldn't you be able to keep the missing submission policy as it is?

ChrisMedina
Community Participant

I just did a training on this with our faculty and they are not happy about the work around in the new gradebook for this. They do like the policy but some instructors that do not have due dates don't like this. 

I even showed them how to edit the csv file so the final grade shows after the students info so they don't have to scroll back and forth for every student. 

jmwatson1
Community Participant

I just ran into this scenario with an instructor and had not idea the feature did not work on external tool assignments. I ended up showing him how he could use the Set Default grade feature per assignment to assign zeros to those assignments with dashes. But I had already made a fool of myself when I said watch this and enabled the late/missing policy. I agree this should be described, but I think a better solution would be to have text describing what this feature affects or doesn't affect beside the feature itself? 309959_pastedImage_1.png