[ARCHIVED] Excusing Students from assignments

[molyneaw]

It would be really great if there was a way to excuse a student from an assignment.  You could place a X in the grade box or add an EX in the grade box.  This would allow the teacher and students to know that the students does not deserve a 0 and they don't have to make it up.

[Robbie_Grant · Accepted solution]

molyneaw​,

Good news, this functionality is currently in development.  You can see what Instructure is working on here Canvas Studio: Excuse an assignment (Phase 1) .

Robbie

[Robbie_Grant · Accepted solution]

molyneaw​,

Good news, this functionality is currently in development.  You can see what Instructure is working on here Canvas Studio: Excuse an assignment (Phase 1) .

Robbie

[jbielecki]

Hi, I have been searching everywhere on this site for an explanation of what the "Excused" designation does to a grade. Your post seemed the likeliest place to find an explanation, but when I clicked the link in your post, it said I don't have access to that page. My question is just when I designate a grade as "excused," does Canvas count it in the overall grade as 100% or does Canvas eliminate that assignment from the average? For example, if the course had ten assignments of ten points each (total 100 possible points in the course of equal weight), a student has scored a 7 on nine of the assignments and I mark the tenth assignment as excused, is the student's final grade going to be 70% (63 out of 90) or 73% (63 out of 90 plus 10 out of 10, i.e., 73 out of 100)? If you know the answer to this or can point me in the right direction as to where to find the answer, I'd greatly appreciate it!

[Anya_ · Accepted solution]

@jbielecki

From what I've found, when a student is excused from an assignment, Canvas acts like that assignment does not exist for them. See How do I change the status of a submission in the Gradebook?  , which mentions Excused assignments are not factored in the grade. So in your example, their grade would be 63/90. This also means if your assignment group is set up to drop the lowest grade, the Excused assignment does not count and it will drop a different assignment. 

[jbielecki]

Thank you!