[ARCHIVED] Gradebook grade display issue

[eliasnoreland]

It seems to me that Canvas by default displays the student's final course grade based on the assignments submitted, not the overall score. For example, if I have 5 assignments worth 1 point each in a course (graded as Complete/Incomplete), the gradebook will display a Pass grade as soon as the student has submitted an assignment with the status Complete, even if I have set a course grade scheme that demands all 5 assignments be complete to pass the course. Have I messed something up, or is this actually the case? And if so, is there any way I can change that? If I view the course as a student, I can tell the gradebook to NOT calculate the course grade based solely on graded assignments by unchecking the checkbox. But this doesn't affect how the grade is displayed in Instructor view, and it also always goes back to calculating by graded assignments when the student submits next assignment.

Here's what I would like and what I have achieved so far:

1. Assignment group contains 5 assignments (the actual number will be much higher, but for now I'm only testing on a small number of assignments in a dummy course). Each assignment (or to be precise, they are actually self-graded quizzes) contains a number of questions, and the points for each question has been set so that the total score for the assignment is 1 point. So, for example, if the quiz contains 10 questions, each question is worth 0,1 points.

2. The student needs to score 5 points to pass the course. Thus, a course grade scheme has been set where everything above 81% is Pass, while everything below that is Fail.

3. Unless the student has successfully submitted all 5 assignments, the gradebook should always display the grade Fail in both student and instructor view.

4. The course grade should eventually be reported automatically to our course grading system. For this purpose, the Canvas course is linked to its counterpart in the grading system, according to the number of modules and assignments. In this case, there will be only one course module, and thus only one assignment group with all the assignments in it. This feature I will obviously not be able to test, since I'm working in a dummy course with no link to the course grading system, but if I only could get the gradebook to work the way I want it to, I think the rest will be just fine 🙂

Sorry for my lengthy question, but could someone please tell me if I have missed something in the course settings? It seems pretty weird to me that the gradebook should award the student a Pass grade when there are still assignments missing.

Thank you all for any help!

[nwilson7 · Accepted solution]

Hello @eliasnoreland  I think the best way to accomplish this would be to go in a put the default grade for all the assignments (would do this by assignment in the gradebook) to be zero.  The zero would get overwritten when the student turns it in

.

This would then calculate scores of zero for everything a student has not done yet.  You could make the due dates for the assignments be the first day of class.  Then you can change the gradebook setting for all missing assignments to be worth zero points to accomplish this as well but then you loose the accuracy of when they really need to submit things.

I think you also have a fundamental argument (guessing you already are passed this) of are students really failing if they have not done work they have not had access to yet?  At midterm everyone should have an "F"?

Hope this helps!

-Nick

[eliasnoreland]

Ahh yes, now it works! I would however have liked a way of making this a global setting instead of having to do it on each assignment. It's OK when you only have 5 assignments, but with nearly 70 as the real course has, it gets rather tedious... But if that's what it takes, I'll do it. The end result is so much more satisfying it's still worth the effort.

Thanks for your help!