Bring back Grade Muting

[sringsmuth]

For quite some time, instructors had the ability to Mute grades in Speedgrader or in the Grades spreadsheet. This was a great way to allow instructors to enter grades without students seeing their progress, and then release (or un-mute) grades all at once. This is no longer available and has been replaced with Show/Hide grades. While it essentially does the same thing, there is a key limitation in that grades cannot be hidden unless at least one grade is entered. This makes it very frustrating for instructors who want to make sure that no one, not even one single student, gets a grade before anyone else.

It's as if the grading functionality took a big step backwards, and it's causing a great deal of consternation with faculty at my university.

My ideas here is simple: return to the earlier process of Muting grades, or at least allow grades to be set to Hidden even if no grades are currently entered.

[Stef_retired]

sringsmuth‌, we greatly appreciate that you've taken the time to share this feature idea—but at this time, we'd ask that you wait for the information gathering process to unfold, and we'll keep the idea in Moderating status for now. We are currently asking for feedback that would improve Post Policies and our team is actively offering suggestions. Would you please add your comments to the ongoing conversation at Post Policy Updates Feedback‌ if you aren't already? If and when enhancements to Post Policies are decided upon and deployed as a result of that conversation, if you find that those changes are not in keeping what you're hoping to see, we'd ask that you comment here so we can open the idea for voting, but only at that time.

In the meantime, we would also encourage you to add your support to https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/14598-visibility-icons , which is currently open for voting.

Thanks!

[sringsmuth]

we'd ask that you wait for the information gathering process to unfold, and we'll keep the idea in Moderating status for now.

I don't know what that means, but I do know I have had several upset faculty at my university who had previously used the Muting feature to great effect. Now it's gone, for no apparent reason, and in its place is a less-functional "Hide" option.

Visibility Icons is not the same at all.

I have heard it said that the Canvas Community is where good ideas go to die. I'm not trying to be pessimistic here, but more and more it seems like that sentiment does reflect reality.

[Stef_retired]

sringsmuth‌, perhaps this clarifies our request: The product manager is currently actively gathering feedback in the blog post and has already updated the post twice with two sets of proposed changes based on the comments and suggestions our members have offered. This process continues to unfold, so we're asking that you follow the blog post and wait to see how the revisions to Post Policies affect instructor workflows before putting forth an idea for the feature to be removed.

We recognize that Visibility Icons is not what you've requested. We often offer links to related ideas for those who are interested.

Hope this helps!

[sringsmuth]

Thank you Stephanie, and I apologize for the tone of my other reply. When I read "Post Policy" I assumed it was referring to posts here on the Community, not posting grades. That blog post does help and it's good to know that Canvas is aware of this issue and working to fix it.

[Stef_retired]

sringsmuth‌, now that the recent changes to Post Policy have made their way into production and users have had some time to work with them, we're going to open this idea for voting.

[sringsmuth]

Thank you stefaniesanders‌!

[Steven_S]

I had thought that perhaps setting the grade posting policy for the assignment to manual would result in the hiding all new grades from the start.  Generally it does. 

However after some testing, I have also found that specifically once an instructor selects post grades>everyone (even just to test the policy on an assignment with only one grade entered) the grade posting policy does not function for that assignment.  Even though the grade posting policy is still set to manual and still after the policy is reset to automatic and back to manual, any new grades posted after that point are automatically posted.  That means we have to be very careful in order to retain full muting functions.  Always use post grades>graded to avoid deactivating your ability to mute future grades.  To mute grades before making changes to those grades use the hide grades function - even if your grade posting policy is set to manual.

You might be interested in my idea for making these functions more intuitive: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/15498-co-locate-controls-to-hidepost-existing-grades-and-manua...  

[gnoack]

I 100% agree.  The grade posting policy with automatic and manual grading seems unnecessarily complicated. 

[jdallow]

I have been using the manual posting to attempt to hide grades, but this works terribly too!

Bring back grade muting -

the Hide function - in the assignment, that only hides students marked - and in the manual setting in the gradebook - are terrible!!!!

Throughout the semester I've had students emailing me as I've been tweaking grades when I thought I had set the hide function.

And I especially hate the automatic email generated to students once I unhide/post the grades. If I do this late at night, the last thing I want is students automatically emailing me about their grade as they were just notified.

Please bring back grade muting - so much smoother and better system.

[bwisniewski]

I'm not sure if this is the best place to add on or if I should make a new thread... 

Many of you may be seeing an increase in student stress/anxiety/depression and mental health needs. My colleageus and I have been frequently conversing about ways to better assist our students with this challenge (growth mindset is one avenue of exploration). One thing we are toying with is asking all teachers to wait until the end of the school day to post grades. We have found that our students are incessantly checking their grades on Canvas, very much waiting for the exact second they get the notification that the grade is posted. If that happens during a class period (of a class they are not currently in), a student may become upset/discouraged if they receive a poor grade, which would then adversely affect their learning in the current class they are in. It is a working theory, no real evidence other than anecdotal from our students. Clearly this is also a K-12 problem, not necessarily college/university.

I was wondering if Canvas could consider a way to allow instructors to select a time to release the grades... like a delayed release much like the delayed post function that is on announcements or the assignment availability function?

[Steven_S]

Timed release of grades is an interesting idea.  It has been suggested at least a couple of times https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/11119 and https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/12853 You might consider resubmitting that as it's own idea and sharing a link to your idea with both of those archived ideas.

[khenscheid]

It makes no sense that this function went away. Please bring it back.

[RobDitto]

 @bwisniewski  in response to:

I was wondering if Canvas could consider a way to allow instructors to select a time to release the grades... like a delayed release much like the delayed post function that is on announcements or the assignment availability function?

Consider upvoting this idea:

• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/15662-delayed-posting-for-student-grades 

[macaulayl]

The last line of the request is what I am voting up LOUDLY.  The way the icon appears in Speedgrader now when there is a manual posting policy set makes it seem like it isn't set and faculty are unsure if they should enter a grade!  If a manual posting policy is set, then the no-eye symbol should be visible even before one grade is entered. Period.

[ls2396]

Definitely -- please, please -- bring back "mute assignment." It was a clean, intuitive, handy operation (while the new approach is none of those things).

[mgwynn1]

I 100% agree. Please bring back the mute button. This is the link to my post about the same issue.https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/16836-hiding-grades-bring-back-the-old-version-of-hiding-grade... 

[sebregts]

I just upvoted this idea, as the current situation simply does not work. I understood the request at first, to wait and see how everything went once all the changes were released to the production environment. And I can honestly say that I gave it a chance and tried to explain the new process to our faculty. But something needs to change!

I just came across a use case where the Post Policy was set to Manual, but Teacher A had previously entered and posted grades. Teacher B wanted to add a couple of more grades, but needed to make sure that they were not yet posted right away.

Spoiler alert: there is no way to tell what will happen until you enter at least one grade... In our case, Teacher A posted the grades to 'Everyone' (which is the default), effectively causing any grade entered later to become visible to the student right away. So far for the Manual policy...

(By the way: the same thing happens with a single teacher; they simply forget which option they chose earlier and have no way of checking it afterwards)

I try to keep an open mind and consider different ways of working across institutions and different use cases. But the process of entering and publishing grades cannot be this hard..!

[Steven_S]

Your teachers A and B are not isolated cases.  You might appreciate https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/15561-gradebook-and-speedgrader-dropdown-visible-invisible-and... which attempts to give everyone who wants the simple on/off switch of the old mute button a way to have exactly that.

[dmcalinski]

Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.