[ARCHIVED] Can I Pull Canvas Grades from Point in Time?

[Kevin_W]

We have some Instructors that need to pull student grades from a point in time from the past. For example, they've entered new grades over the last month and a half but would like to see students' overall grade from March 13.

Is there a way to make this happen? 

[James]

Great question,  @Kevin_W .

I wish I had a great answer for you. Unfortunately, there is no direct or easy way to get that out of Canvas.

We download grades nightly as part of our early alert system, so I have a daily tracking database of the overall course grade going back a while and could pull it the average at that point (not individual grades), but that only helps if you had that set up ahead of time.

You could pull the submission data from the API which would have the grades, but then you would have to filter the information out that had been submitted since March 13.

If you have Canvas Data, you might be able to use the API to fetch the data from March 15 or so and load it into a database and do the query. The Data Portal only shows the last 5 days worth of dumps, but I'm fairly sure they keep it farther back (it's been a while since I've looked).

A problem comes up when there are rules to drop grades in place. All the information returned by the API or through Canvas Data does not tell you which grades were dropped.

[Kevin_W]

Thanks,  @James ! 

I figured it was a long shot and hopefully also something that we only need/want during this unique time.  It will probably be easier - for those who requested it - to just break out the ol' calculator!

I appreciate you taking the time for this response!