Hide Assignment Group Totals from Students

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

 

  Idea will be open for vote May 5th, 2015 - August 5th, 2015  Learn more about voting...

 

Instructors would like the ability to hide the automatically-created assignment group totals from students.

 

  Comments from Instructure

 

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-01-09) 

Grades

Hide Assignment Group Totals with Final Grade

38 Comments
snugent
Community Champion

Yes!! It doesn't make sense that the assignment groups columns display in the gradebook if the instructor is not weighting grades. This confuses students and faculty. I find myself explaining why they are there too often. If the instructor is not weighting grades, give them the option to hide them.

scottdennis
Instructure
Instructure

Removing "Ability to" from the title of this idea to make it more easily sortable with similar ideas.

mkrasnow
Community Novice

Yes, and this goes for the ultimate total as well!  Currently I have a grade weighting policy that i can't implement in Canvas and the fact that I can't hide the Total confuses students

ljdewitt
Community Novice

Basically, instructors need to be able to control ALL gradebook columns (show/don't show, points/percent).   No matter how many times you try to explain to students that they need to ignore something in the gradebook, it is way to confusing when it does count in some classes and not others. Please help us with this!!!!

kona
Community Coach
Community Coach

Deactivated user, you can hide the total (overall) grade. It's a feature under course settings under more options - What options are available on the Course Details page?

MoreOptions.png

cwruck
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hey all,

First, we've already designed and are currently planning on implementing (later this year) the ability to hide any column in the gradebook. Yay! But that doesn't really solve the problem of how things display to students...

I'm a BIG fan of granting instructors more granular control over what they see in their gradebook and how grades are communicated to students. We're working on designs for a solution to this problem this summer. So, I have on my list of things to give instructors control over: how grades are displayed (points/percentage/grading scheme) for assignments, assignment group total and the total grade, with the ability to hide both the final grade and assignment group totals from students.

What do you all think? Am I missing anything?

ljdewitt
Community Novice

Dear Christi,

That is great news, but we also need the ability to show/hide ALL columns in the gradebook for any individual assignment, quiz, etc. and not just the final grade and assignment group totals. For example, I may not want any students to see their grade for an assignment until I have finished grading all the assignments for that class. Does that make sense?

Thanks for working on this!!!

cwruck
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hi  @ljdewitt ​

You already have the ability to "hide" an assignment in the way you're mentioning. Canvas calls it "muting" an assignment. How do I mute an assignment in the Gradebook?

Or am I misunderstanding what you're asking?

cgiraud
Community Novice

We are trying to come up with solutions for hiding our gradebook in keeping with school policy which requires that averages be revealed only at times when there is sufficient critical mass for the average to have meaning, when students are struggling, and at mid-term. Currently it seems that muting might be a solution except that I understand that muting also means the grade does not figure into the average. Is there a way to maintain the grade's impact on the overall average while still concealing it?

Also we really need to be able to hide category averages, not just overall average as Kona Jones illustrates with her screenshot.

cgiraud
Community Novice

The other problem with muting is that a muted assignment doesn't figure into a student's average. This is REALLY confusing for students as our intention in using mute is to conceal the grade after the teacher has initially shared the grade. Once the assignment is muted (as all of ours will need to be), the student's grade no longer calculates making a laborious process for teachers to unmute everything in order to see the grade that needs to be reported in our SIS at official school reporting times.