[ARCHIVED] Clarifying Grade Posting Policy--Does Hide only affect grades already posted?

[venitk]

I'm really hoping to get a Canvas super expert to weigh in here (erinhallmark‌, maybe?  @InstContentTeam ‌?) 

I'm writing a blog post for our instructors on the Grade Posting Policy and one of the scenarios is what do you do if you're halfway through grading an assignment and you realize you didn't change the assignment to manual.

My understanding is 

• Hide works ONLY on grades already assigned (this is not explicitly stated in How do I hide grades for an assignment in the New Gradebook?  but that's how I understand it--could someone please confirm?)
• Manual grade posting policy only works on grades YET to be assigned (How do I select a grade posting policy for an assignment in the New Gradebook? says this pretty clearly in the images)

So, if someone is halfway through grading, they need to both hide the grade and change the grade posting policy to manual for that assignment. Is that correct? 

[nwilson7]

 @venitk ‌, I would not consider myself a "Super Expert" but I am pretty sure I know the answer to your question.  "Hide Grades" (which was formally "mute") works for grades already entered AND those yet to be entered.  You turn on "Hide Grades" normally during the time you are grading so that students do not start getting grades or feedback until you are ready to release it.  Think of it like you were grading a huge research project and did not want the first student you graded to see their grade until you finished grading everyone.  That way if you want to change it you can and you are not getting questions about why a student got a certain grade while you are still grading. Also fun to add suspense to your course   Students get a notification when you first starting hiding a grade and then again when you post them.

Manually posting applies to everything up front and technically works very similar to "hiding" except it does not necessary mean that it is because you are grading, it could be a Canvas auto-graded assignment that you just don't want scores released yet.  Students will get a notification when the graded it posted but do not get anything that you have it hidden and then.

So if they were halfway through grading and decided that they do not want students to see grades, they would HIDE them, this will cover already and future grades until the instructor hits "post".  Grades already entered would show to students if you switch to Manually post.

Hope this helps!

-Nick

[venitk]

Thanks  @nwilson7 ‌. I'm still hoping for someone from Canvas to confirm because what you describe is what I expected to happen, but it doesn't match with what I've heard people describe. For example, yesterday one of my instructors, mid-way through grading, realized he wanted the grades for that assignment to be invisible, so he hid them, but students were still contacting him about their grades (although it's possible they got an email about their grade before he hid them, depending on their settings).

Because the guides aren't explicit about this, I'm hoping for some clarification. I'll also try posting on the guides. 

[venitk · Accepted solution]

For anyone looking for this answer, I  got a response from the doc team on this guide: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-16571-4152813670 Hide only works for grades already assigned.

I asked for the guide to be more explicit about which items are hidden, so hopefully that will happen. 

This was part of their response (there's more on the guide):

If you use a Test Student (or any student for that matter), give them a grade, and use the Hide grades option, it will only hide grades that have already been entered and will not hide assignment grades that are entered after that point (that is what the grade posting policy is for. 

[erinhmcmillan]

Katie,

Your understanding is correct. The team also recently created a new lesson to help with the flow of posting policies that you may be interested in using as well: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-17999-how-do-i-use-posting-policies-in-my-course 

Thanks,

Erin

[SESw]

I have finally figured this out and it's near the end of the semester. It is counter-intuitive that hiding grades does not hide them.  Canvas needs much better transparency and clarity.  The fact that as a default all individual annotations on a paper (and I generally make about a dozen annotations on each page as I grade) are sent out to students one at a time, even though the instructor has hidden the grades, is a major design flaw and an error in communication about your product that would be very, very easy to fix.