[ARCHIVED] Grade visibility

[_inactive_wbarn]

How many K-12 Canvas schools are struggling with the fact that students and parents can see grades?  We find that parents can become negotiators on behalf of their kids if the grades are not high enough.

[gormana]

Winnie, I think you are asking a troubling and yet realistic question. I feel your pain! Due to the increase of  "helicopter" parents, no matter if a grade is posted on Canvas or on a hard copy, more parents are in the midst of negotiating for higher grades. One of the best features of Canvas is our ability to post a rubric with every assignment. Once a rubric is in place I have found its hard to argue or negotiate the grade with a student or a parent. A solid posted rubric does not allow much wiggle room. When objectives, standards and outcomes are stated grading becomes easy for me as the teacher and easier to stop a parent in their tracks. I have found meaningful rubrics online to use as a template and then modify and add what I need to secure my objectives. Good luck!

[ckelson]

Hey Winnie,

I would second Adrene's comment, rubrics can really help to "prove" a grade so to speak. I understand your concern though, did you have any ideas on what other solutions you would like to see prevent this?

[wegley_k]

We have Canvas for K-8 and grade visibility was a large issue for us, especially because in K-5 the grades are based on many factors, not just assignments in Canvas. Therefore, we had the wording below coded onto our Grades/Assignment pages for our Middle School:

Please be aware that scores on this page only reflect assignments graded electronically through Canvas. Therefore grades posted in Canvas may not reflect all grades within this course. Wood Oaks Parents and Students only, please use IC Parent Portal to view your child's current grade.

For our elementary schools we had Grades removed from the side navigation and the top tool bar.  This really helped our parent community and stopped phone calls regarding grades.  Students still get their feedback and scores by going to the Assignement tab.  It's just less visible this way and really helped with parent pressure.

[achiao]

This doesn't quite solve the whole issue you all bring up, but you can hide the student's total grade summary for a course. Students and parents would not see a total grade for the course, hopefully, eliminating confusion about what they grade is in Canvas versus their "true" grade in the SIS. You can find the "hide grade total summary" in the Course Settings. Click on "more options" and you will see a checkbox for "Hide totals in student grades summary".

Example of a Student/Parent View of Their Grades for a Course With the Hide Totals Setting Enabled:

An example of what the hidden totals look like on a course level for a student/parent:

How to enable this:

Got to Course Settings and click on "more options"

Select the checkbox, "Hide totals in student grades summary" and click "Update Course Details"

[clong]

Hi Winnie,

I understand your dilemma with the displaying of grades in Canvas. About 70% of our teachers do use campus as their official gradebook, but the other 30% use the grade book in our SIS or a desktop product called Easy Grade Pro. So needless to say having grades come from three different spots can get a little crazy. We have a portal that sentence all this information into one spot for students parents and staff so that has helped tremendously. The other thing that has helped is just patience and time.

For the teachers that are not using Canvas for their gradebook we encourage them to hide the grades in their course navigation and use the method Deactivated user​described above. I also like the disclaimer text  @wegley_k ​ posted.

I know some schools hide their grade menu for all observers.  We have not done this, but if we can go back in time it's something we would strongly consider.

You can do this by buy modifying the Global JavaScript that you have set for your Canvas instance. If you'd like to see the code that would do this I've made a copy of it and put it on my Dropbox Account.

See: hide_grades.js

[ngee]

Chris, we have recently adopted Canvas as our LMS, and we implementing it over the summer.  I'm one of the faculty members in charge of the implementation, and this is a huge issue for us.  It's not that we don't want to give student feedback, but in a K-12 setting, we have internal procedures for reporting grades that allow students, parents, and administrators to have nuanced one-on-one conversations with them about their grades.  We don't want this information updated electronically and publicly without contextual conversations.  We want teachers to be able to use the gradebook as a tool, but we don't want it to be constantly driving up the anxiety of our students and parents.

Anyway, could you describe in a little more detail how your javascript coding system worked, or  could you reference the other schools that have used this coding to remove the "Grades" button from the top navigation menu?

Also, isn't this a settings preference at the Admin level?  I have posted in the explanation of the "View All Grades" function below.  If our school turned off the "View All Grades" permission and the "Edit Grades" permission for students and parents (observers), wouldn't the "Grades" button in the Global Naviagation menu disappear for those users?

This link https://s3.amazonaws.com/tr-learncanvas/docs/Canvas_Permissions_Account.pdf​ describes "View All Grades" as an Admin permission that "Allows user to view Gradebook."  It also notes that "If both Edit grades​and View all grades​are disabled, Gradebook and SpeedGrader will be hidden from the course navigation."

Doesn't this mean that some users with permission (teachers) could use the gradebook but other users without permissions (students and observers) could not see it?

Thanks!

[clong]

Hi Nathaniel,

I didn't think to solve this via changing user permissions, but that would be better than a javascript that hides the menu after the page loads. Have you tested this out in your beta or test instance to see how it works?

Inquiring minds want to know :smileygrin:

[MZelmanowicz]

Hi Nathaniel,

I thought your idea was terrific so I decided to give it a try, and after testing it appears that changing the permissions only removes the grades option from the side navigation. Users still have access to the gradebook from the Grades top menu icon and students still will be able to see their grades listed on the assignments tab or dashboard.  I was really hoping this solution would work! Good idea though!

Best,

Marissa

[clong]

If you enable the new UI there is no global grades Navigation link.

[awilliams]

Hey Deactivated user​. Another option worth considering is the "Mute an Assignment" feature. An icon will appear indicating to students and parents the assignment is muted, which could still potentially cause problems, but it would effectively prevent students and parents from seeing any grades that you have entered until you desire. Muting also has the benefit of only affecting a particular course and it is easy for an instructor to do themselves. Modifying global JavaScript files would affect the entire Canvas instance and require technical personnel to implement. See this guide for more information on muting assignments: How do I mute an assignment in the Gradebook?​

[silversn]

What I typically do, especially since I weight assignments, is to mute assignments until I have 3 or 4 to release. I then release those all at the same time, this usually resolves the .1% or 1% phone call/conversation because the grade either levels out to be the same, majorly improves or drops significantly.

[jdinger]

Parents have had access to grades for years here with PowerSchool, and now Canvas.  Yes, there are some parents who "helicopter" over the teachers; my experience, though, has been that it serves as a tool for parents to "motivate" their student to get things completed that are not done.

The bigger issue we are going to face is making sure that Canvas grades match PowerSchool grades, since we are still using PowerSchool as the primary communicator to parents.  I am anticpating a bit of chaos this fall. . .

[pwalsh]

Heavens, yes! We will still be using Skyward for grades this year in addition to adding Canvas as our LMS, so I'm taking some new steps in addition to ones I've used in the past. I teach middle school math and science. I've only used an LMS for my self-paced science classes before, so adding my math classes will be new. All our students and parents have access to Skyward and Canvas. In our district, parents first get Skyward accounts when their student is in 7th grade, so many of them are new to how the online gradebook works and doesn't work.

Previous ideas that have helped:

• I ask that students advocate for themselves in regards to grades. I will answer parent questions about missing assignments, but if parents want to talk to me about assessment grades I ask them to schedule an appointment and I include the student. I generally steer the conversation so that the student is the one making requests of me, not the parent. Such an important life skill.
• I have a very flexible retake/late assignment policy. Once parents know that their student can "fix" the grade, they calm way down.
• I contact families who have a student with many missing assignments or low grades about halfway through the grading period and let them know how the grade can be changed. I copy students' school email addresses when I send those messages out. They have a right to know what I'm telling their parents.
• I repeatedly remind students that the grades in the LMS are NOT the actual grades but are only there to help them know what they haven't done yet.
• I have regular days where I have everyone in the class check Skyward at the same time to reinforce the notion that that is where they should look for their grades.

New for me this year:

• In my welcome letter I'm stating where actual grades can be located.
• I will hide the Grades link for each course in Canvas.
• I will use the tip above about hiding totals just to make sure there's no grade to see.
• I'll probably mention this at the fall open house and maybe even pass out a little half sheet of grading info.
• I'll probably put a notice on the home page for each course about this until the year is well underway.

[cgiraud]

Be advised that currently the iPad app does not allow you to hide grades, Patricia.

[pwalsh]

Thanks for that info. In general, we have the kids use a browser to access Canvas on iPads. None of my parents have said anything about this yet, so I'm guessing that most of them have caught on that grades in Canvas aren't accurate for us.

[cgiraud]

I am delighted to see so many of us weighing in on this issue. We are in the process of implementing right now. Resolving grade visibility was a major concern for me over the summer as we prepared to launch. Canvas folks removed the Grades item from the UI in Global Navigation. I am pleased to hear the new UI doesn't have it. My faculty were oriented to Canvas via the old UI so I didn't want to pull the rug out from under them with yet another change.

Anyway, so far, so good. Students and Observers can still see graded assignments via syllabus and when those assignments are returned, but we are able to keep them out of gradebook-like view by hiding from course navigation.

The hide grade totals was not a good option for us since Canvas still allows users to see category totals.

Muting an assignment was OK except that the language that associated with muted assignments looked really unfavorable to the teacher indicating that he or she was dragging time on getting work graded.

I would love to see Canvas increase flexibility here. I am seeing good suggestions in these discussion boards about changes needed for us in K12.

[cgiraud]

FYI: the Mobile App for iPad does not reflect changes made at the course or admin level to conceal grades. If you have a closed-gradebook policy, the iPad will betray you. I just submitted the "idea" that the mobile app should reflect settings made at the account and course level. Would love folks to help me get some traction on getting these things to sync.