Truly Ungraded Assignment

[cesbrandt]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

I'm sorry for the odd title, I just can't seem to come up with a good one that describes what I'm going to be suggesting. We use "ungraded" assignments in quite a few courses as a way to evaluate the progress of our students. Now, I know we can set the Display Grade as to Not Graded and it will force the Points value to 0, hide the assignment in the gradebook (students), and disabled the Submission Type. However, I propose a variation similar to how Practice Quizzes work. A can Practice Quiz can still be evaluated like a normally, but they do not take any role in the gradebook calculations.

Basically, my idea is to disable the forcing of a point-value of 0 and the disabling of the Submission Type. This way students are still able to submit to the assignment, using whatever submission type the assignment calls for, and the instructor can still provide feedback, but the assignment wouldn't appear in the gradebook. To accompany this, I would recommend the removal of the Assignment Group selection when choosing this.

A great use for an assignment like this would be for progressive assignments, like term projects. The student/group would submit the materials they are expected to have completed by that point in the class and the instructor and evaluate the material. The students could then take the evaluation and rework the material for the final submission. An alternative use would be for review assignments. It's not uncommon to see ungraded review assignments used as a means to evaluate the material that is being retained by students in the interest of improving the delivery of material (not really possible without the ability for students to submit something).

Here's an example of what an assignment edit page would look like:

The assignment would look and act like a normal assignment to the student, except it wouldn't appear in the gradebook. Maybe add a note under the Due/Points/Available line identifying that the assignment would not be used when determining their final grade.

  Instructure Comment

For More information Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-08-06) 

[Renee_Carney]

Thank you for your Feature Idea submission. We wanted to call your attention to ​ &    which were submitted in different voting periods, but archived due to lack of votes or inadequate response. You may want to reference these ideas for insight.

Since archived ideas can be re-submitted, your idea will be open for vote in the next voting cycle.

In the meantime, help your idea gain traction by posting a link to this idea in the comments of the other, archived idea (which will notify author and anyone who is following the idea) and share your idea to colleagues and peers as well.

[kmeeusen]

Rick McPherson

Again another intriguing idea, Rick, and one that I could support. Providing practice activities is a strong best practice and when you remove the anxiety of the gradebook (even if it has zero value) it becomes even more attractive as a learning tool in Canvas. Even beyond its practice value, the ability to use this feature for staging longer projects is valuable.

I did find one archived feature idea you may want to check out at No gradebook listing for assignment shell with no graded assignments

I am going to recommend that this idea be opened for voting during the next period.

You can learn more about the feature idea process and how voting works at How do I create a new feature idea?

KLM

[rsmcpher]

Thanks, the below referenced item is interesting, but does not really cover the fixes I am trying to request.

Rick

Rick McPherson

Lecturer - Management and Organization Department, Foster School of Business

Adjunct Faculty - Masters of Communication Leadership, - Digital Media and Networks

University of Washington

E-mail: rsmcpher@uw.edu

Phone: 425-818-8280

[Renee_Carney]

  Idea is currently in development

[cdoherty]

How is this feature in development already when voting just opened up?

[cesbrandt]

I have no idea, but I wasn't going to say anything.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Canvas developers agreed that the institutions should be able to decide if ungraded activities (activities not in the gradebook) should have a submission capability and decided to skip the voting process. That, or they had already decided to revisit the original idea submission and the timing of my submission was just coincidental.

Either way, it's nice to know that the ideas are given enough consideration that some are found to be enough inline with the direction Instructure wants to take Canvas to address them immediately. It's nice that Canvas is driven by the community and that the developers embrace the ideas so readily.

[Renee_Carney]

cesbrandt​

Your assumptions are pretty accurate.  The only nuance with this case is that this concept was picked up as a recent 'hack week' project by an engineer!  You can find more information about hack week in Ideas: State of the Union​.

[kona]

I can definitely see where my faculty would use and greatly appreciate this option! So glad to see that it's in development! 🙂

[cesbrandt]

So, as my boss has noted, I'm overly excited about this. Having read the release notes for Beta this morning (Canvas Beta Release Notes (2016-07-25)), I wanted to let everyone know that the feature is up on the Beta sites for testing and it's fairly simple to use.

You still have to select an Assignment Group within the gradebook. It's not quite ideal, in my opinion, but I suppose it does work for identifying like/related activities. Everything else is basically the same. You can configure the grade display, submission type, etc. without concern for the assignment counting towards the final grade by enabling the new option found immediately below the Display Grade as option:

Once enabled (and saved) the edit and rendered screens will have the following displayed at the top:

It looks the exact same for students.

Now, the assignment still displays in the gradebook book for the associated assignments group, however, it will have a new icon that, when clicked, will display the following message:

Lastly, and this is the most important part, while it does display a grade as part of the gradebook, that value is not included in the calculations for the rendered ​Total Grade​.

[melissa_buchana]

I want an even more nuanced version of this where for on a student-by-student case, an assignment can be omitted. It already is available by typing EX (exclude) in place of the score but then the score is then erased and therefore not available for the student to see as reference.  here is my link .  We use skyward for official grading, but I transfer the grades over only when its time to post report cards because students have up to date access to scores in canvas. Skyward has the option that I speak of.