[ARCHIVED] How do you use Canvas to get quarter grades?

[joseph_allen]

We are a K-12 institution that operates on a standard 4 quarter school year.   This is our first year using Canvas.  We're having some difficulty figuring out how to get quarter grades which can be loaded into our SIS to generate report cards.  The grade export report will work for Q1 because that is the start of the school year, but that report will aggregate over the course of the year.  I need to be able to see just Q2 grades, e.g. Nov 1 to Dec 30, then Q3 Jan 1 to March 1 etc.  Canvas does not seem to have any report that exports grades and is date driven.  Their standard answer is to use "terms", but that doesn't really make any sense for a year long 5th grade math class.  if we set up a term for every quarter, then you'd have to re-enroll all students in the course, you'd lose the continuity of one canvas site for a year etc. 

My question to you K12 community - How are you solving this problem?  Please help.

[wgargaro]

Thank you for asking this  @joseph_allen ​ we are in the same situation.

[lsimpkins]

We are a high school of 1200+ students and 75 classroom teachers.  We, too, are 1st year Canvas users.  As a Canvas admin user, in course settings and features, I enabled Multiple Grading Periods and created the date ranges for each quarter.  At the Grading area, Settings, the grading periods were created.  There can be no overlap of dates at this time.  (It will be helpful to correct this aspect.)

Every assignment that is assigned to "Everyone" and given a due date will appear in the Grading period for that date range.  There is a bug, though.  Any differentiated assignment will default to the last grading period.  This wasn't too much of a problem for Quarter One but cannot stay this way going forward.

When the quarter period date range is over, teachers cannot edit grades in the Grades area.  We used Speedgrader for the assignment to change the grades or handle grades for those students who had incompletes.

[jjordan1]

Joe,  There is a movement already underway in this area:  Differentiated Assignments not in Gradebook Grading Period    also     (Please Vote for this request).  What Linda mentioned is good.  Right now Canvas is about to insert a fix to the Gradebook in how it handles mutliple grading periods and differentiated assignments (multiple due dates) in the BETA instances, we hear this weekend.  Then a week or so for regression testing, then insert into Production.  We are all waiting for this.

With the date fixes for multiple grading periods and assignments, the next step is the reporting of it beyond the multiple grading periods, that is what why I am asking for your vote.

Until the Bug above is fixed, we are asking our Teachers to NOT use Differentiated Assignments for Q2.  So long as they leave "Everyone" in the Assign to: it should reflect an accurate date-driven view of Quarter 2 grading period and Total.  Hope this is helpful.

[joseph_allen]

Jason,

Of course you have my vote.  The whole grading period feature though is a little silly without some mechanism to get data (grades) out of the system by quarter.  We will be pushing Canvas hard for this.  It is basic functionality for a K12 organization.

[cgiraud]

We are at the start of a new quarter today. Many problems with grading periods. In my opinion, this feature is not ready for use. Be warned.

Problems--some mentioned in this thread already (according to Canvas these are known "bugs" that they are working to correct)

1. Assignments with multiple due dates as one might set up for different sections do not show up in the quarter. You must view them in "See All Grading Periods."

2. Grades cannot be changed once a quarter has passed unless you access the grade via SpeedGrader. This problem is not consistent with all assignments, only a mysterious few.

3. Some grades appear as zeros with a line through them instead of as a score.

If you are the Canvas admin for your school, be warned. I have spent my morning hearing from upset teachers and talking with Canvas tech support who very kindly have told me that they are aware of these glitches and are working to correct them.

My advice: Don't use grading periods until these things are fixed or you'll waste a lot of your day smoothing teacher anxiety with workarounds once your school moves into the magic next time zone of another grading period.

[jjordan1]

All, the fix was pushed into BETA this evening (10/12).  I have tested my instance and it works properly now for Multiple Grading Periods with Differentiated Assignments (or non-diff assignments).    Please test your BETA instance and let your CSM know.  I heard they wanted to hear back it was working b4 pushing into production.  Maybe it will go into production tomorrow.

[joseph_allen]

That is good news.  We are about 2 months into our first year of Canvas use and the impressions are not good because of little 'glitches' like this.

[ngee]

Agreed. We are also two months in, and I am trying to get my faculty to see the positives, but there are lots of these bugs that undercut that argument.

Nathaniel Gee

ngee@randolphschool.net

Randolph Upper School

4915 Garth Road SE

Huntsville, AL 35802

Seeking Truth, Building Character, Nurturing All

[jjordan1]

I believe Instructure is listening, and this is almost in reach. We do need to insist on the matching grade period/section exports. Their platform is robust in all other areas and getting better each day.

Sent from my iPhone

[ngee]

 @ngee  Oct 14, 2015 8:40 AM (in response to Renee Carney)

I will test the beta fix for this and hope that this serious flaw is fixed, but aren't these two issues I describe below still a problem for the rest of you in a K-12 environment who need multiple grading periods?

1.)  Terms must be allowed to overlap.  One should be able to filter for Quarter One Grades (ex:  August 15- October 8), Second Quarter grades (ex: October 8-December 21), first semester grades (August 15-December 21).  Then, we should be able to repeat the process for second semester.  Right now (if we don't have multiple section courses with the flaw above) we can create the quarters, but we cannot see any combined grade but the total grade for the whole year.  This will be especially problematic in second semester when we only want to see Quarter 3, 4, and ONLY the combined Semester 2 grades.  This is a function of all electronic gradebooks I have ever seen, and it is so obvious and critical that it should not wait for "votes."

2.) many teachers and schools weight the grading periods and also have a final exam for each semester with a weight. So, the grading periods need to have that option too.  Quarter one:  40%, Quarter two: 40%, Final Exam: 20%.

We have just begun using Canvas this year, and we've worked hard to get out teachers excited about it's positive features, but gaps like this that are so logical and commonly used in a K-12 environment set back faculty buy in to the system considerably.

[jjordan1]

Hello Nathaniel, both issues and any like them affect us in k-12 for sure, whether quarters or trimesters or....  The production fix is close, so the multiple grading periods should be resolved very soon, the BETA fix proved they had the proper code, so we are almost done with this problem.  There is a known issue with the grading periods where edits past the end date aren't possible, I am still following to see if that clears up.  Many have mentioned to not assign MGP at the account level and just 'allow' it, so that Teachers can control the dates, we elected to leave it at the account level and adjust the dates to get final stuff in for Q1 then adjust back to original end dates.  For the 2nd question, the assignment group (category) is where you weight, and unfortunately there isn't a term weight, but in our case and maybe others, there is still a SIS behind the scenes that needs the end of term total and we weight there for our Q1+Q2+SemesterExam=Sem Total.  The Instructure team is paying close attention as all this grading mess has caused many K-12 Teachers grief.  I think they will get it right and very soon.

[wgargaro]

 @jjordan1 ​  @ngee ​ How can I implement this fix for my school?

[jjordan1]

If you have multiple grading periods setup, are you looking for the Q2 temp fix or ?  Could you add a bit more please

[wgargaro]

Well I have two grading periods per semester and I need to be able to pull the grade for just the second grading period.

We are also encountering the differentiated assignment issue - does this fix that as well?

[jjordan1]

Maybe look at my recent posts (a few minutes ago) here:    and see if this would work for you?

[jjordan1]

From the 'gradebook view' export you get the group Totals in the .csv, but from the account level export you get the Current and Final, no group Totals.  Maybe dragging assignments into a non-weighted assignment group to get a total would work in this case, but it would be within the course

[wgargaro]

So that is the only option for us.  I thought there was this Beta fix that was going in to production.

[ngee]

Thanks, Jason. I'm just the on-campus Canvas trainer, and an English teacher, so I don't really understand all the technical stuff.  I'll forward your post to my school's technology coordinator.  We tried the new fix in beta yesterday afternoon and it still didn't work.  We'll cross our fingers that it get fixed soon since we are already in second quarter.

NG

[jschurrer]

How soon is soon?  I feel like these issues have put many of us in a considerable bind. 

[joseph_allen]

Nathaniel,

The grading quarters is really our only option too, but we need some way to get the data out of Canvas by quarter, i.e. there needs to be a report with filter. This has to happen now.  And I totally agree that we don't have time for 'votes'.

[jjordan1]

Bug Fix is in production as of last night.  All looks good for multiple grading periods now.  Huge thank you Coding team!!

I did notice though that if an assignment has no due date is lands at the end in the last grading period (for us Q4).  Seems to be a default, so I am wondering if better to just not show an assignment/quiz/graded discussion with no due date (effectively hiding them from gradebook until a due date is assigned).  What do you think would be appropriate here?  A community vetting would be good.

[wgargaro]

Ok - I am confused with a lot of the wording going on here.

I received notice that the bug that caused differentiated assignments to drop to the last grading period has been fixed and the teachers who have checked have said it appears to be working for them.

Now I really need to be able to pull specifically 2nd nine weeks grades (not final averages) for my classes.  I am reading here that it is in production - is that only for the teacher to be able to do this?  Or for Admins?

I need to have this capability to pull grades for my teachers by November 23rd.  Any ideas?  I can not imagine that I will have to rely on my teachers to do that part.  What will be chaos.

[joseph_allen]

Billy,

That is exactly the problem I am asking about.  How can a teacher pull grades per grading period?  Adding grading periods was a good first step, but now teachers and admins need to be able to pull grade reports by period.  Aggregate / full year grades are pretty useless in a K12 and I can use terms to solve this problem because it is a year long class.

[jschurrer]

Joe, Can you explain a little bit more about how you use terms to do this? Do you then create 4 canvas course for the same year long course? IE – English 1 Q1, English 1 Q2, English 1 Q3, English 1Q4?

If so, then do your teachers find it a hassle to continually copy their content from one to the next? Not to mention what I imagine is the epically long list of courses?

Thanks in advance for sharing your best practices on this!

Jim

[lsimpkins]

At our school of 1200+ high school students, progress reports are due on Nov. 11th for the second quarter.  As stated in earlier posts, the Grade Export from the School Settings met the task.  Now, the date range needs to be identified.  No assignments before October 5th should be included in the Grade Export.

  The only configuration option is to select a term.  Please implement a more definitive date range option so we may enter the date ranges of the specific quarter.

[wgargaro]

Can you please let me know how you did this?  Was this each teacher or did you as the Admin do it?

[jjordan1]

Hello Jim,  we have a yearlong term for 1.0 credit courses and implemented the multiple grading periods for each of our quarters (Q1 - 1516, Q2 - 1516, Q3 - 1516, Q4 - 1516) at the account level.  At that time I thought it was perfect because the dynamic gradebook total would always reflect the the grading period selected in the Teacher, student, parent observer views.  I still think it is viable, but the exports have not been coded properly to match, so we are all waiting for this last major feature to kick in (at the account and gradebook level).  Our .5 credit/half-year courses are their own term and will either be Q1,Q2 or Q3,Q4 (depending on the date range).  I hope this is helpful.  It certainly is not the only way, but we are able to retain only a single course/term using the multiple grading periods.

[joseph_allen]

Jim,

We are not using terms to solve this problem for exactly the reason you stated.  In a year long course, using terms of anything less than a years would cause the teacher to have 4 courses, they would have to re-do enrollments, move content, it would be confusing for students, parents, and teachers. We have 55k students and 130k parents so this is not an option. So grading periods seems like a good solution in that it can segregate grades and assignments into the proper grading periods, but Canvas has failed to add filters so that we can get grades out by grading period.  All of the embedded reports give you aggregate grades for the full year with all assignments and scores.  That is not helpful in a traditional K12 running on 4 quarters.  We need Canvas to solve this problem immediately as I like many on this thread are coming into second quarter and second quarter interims with no good solution on how to get grades out of the system to be put into our SIS.  I'm asking for others with similar experience to chime in and I'd like Canvas to step up and add filters to the reports.  That would solve the majority of this challenge.

The other related problem to grading periods is that the app, which is great, shows an aggregate grade.  So we have to tell students to ignore the grade.  That certainly is rubbing students and parents the wrong way.  What we need is a quarter filter on the app and on the Grades page in the browser version so that students can see their grade by grading period, not aggregate which doesn't mean anything to them.

I'm actually using JS and CSS to hide the grades when a student or parent (observer) clicks on the grades button as again these are aggregates, not quarter / grading period grades.

[lsimpkins]

This is a need for our school, also.

[jjordan1]

With multiple grading periods enabled, the gradebook will show the total (current total) depending on the Grading period selected.  We ask our staff to tick the option on the Total column to move it to the front at the end of the grading period.  They then can bring up two browser windows side by side to enter final term grades into our student management system web interface.  This is the only option now for us across the quarters because there is not yet a working grade export tied to multiple grading periods & sections (although we hear it is coming).  Without using assignment categories as marking periods/terms, this is the best we can get now and it works now that the MGP bug fix was implemented.  Hopefully this is helpful for others too.

[wgargaro]

I guess what I am missing is how did you get this into your SIS?

[jjordan1]

Our SIS is Education Edge by Blackbaud and there is an accompanying online gradebook/web application called Netclassroom.  Our teachers will bring that gradebook up side by side with the Canvas gradebook (two windows, not two tabs) and do a manual entry of the student end of term grade.  Netclassroom feeds our SIS directly.  As we are in a transition year, our staff are permitted to enter day to day grades in either, but at the end of the quarter there has to be a total in Netclassroom.  More and more are using Canvas for day to day now, as it fits better with our blended learning model and is efficient for them.  The rest will transition to this by the end of the year.  There is an admin import option for me to use for end of term grades in Education Edge, butttt can't get that from Canvas appropriately so waiting until then.

[jjordan1]

Wondering if I can get feedback on the MGP fix problem that our school is having, are you feeling similar or is there a better solution for this? https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-5189#comment-27307

[ckelson]

Hey Joe,

I wanted to add an update to this discussion. I recently spoke with our Gradebook team on this and their is currnetly a new feature in the works to solve this: 

Right now, when you export the GB, it automatically exports the current Grading Period. When this fix gets merged, you can select which grading period you want to export by selecting a GP in the Grading Period drop-down. Whichever GP is selected in the dropdown will be exported. This is currently in development and we hope to have released fairly soon.

-Clint Kelson