Grade Integration Testing Discovery Final Grade

[kari]

Hello, 

I am curious if anyone has come across this unusual problem. 

We are currently building a custom grade integration between our Canvas and Peoplesoft system. This is not the problem.

My problem is on the GET call for (and this is an example) https://<localhost>/api/v1/courses/sis_course_id:0000PRC.GradeTesting/enrollments

In this course, the possible points are 1000. Let's say I mute a column worth 100 points because I am an instructor grading a final project and I don't want students to see their scores. The mute scores should only prevent a student from seeing that grade. But, should show that grade being calculated into the final grade for the instructor. In fact, it does on the GUI side. 

Problem: When I do an API call above the muted assignment is not calculated into the final_grade. It appears that the system is treating unmuted like a 0 even though there is a grade.

"grades": {
"html_url": "https://<localhost>/courses/23182/grades/2",
"current_score": 100,
"current_grade": "A",
"final_score": 90,
"final_grade": "A-"

Thoughts on this? Am I not understanding the terminology correctly?

Kari

[kona]

 @kari , based on the technical aspects of your question I'm going to share this with the https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/canvas-developers?sr=search&searchId=1e918889-c78e-4e9f-bf34-...‌ group in the Community. They are the ones who focus on the back-end integrations and programming and can hopefully help!

[kari]

Thank you,  @kona ‌!

[rake_9]

Oh! heavens!  We've been thrashing around for the past few days, trying to figure out if we had misunderstood something after 3 semesters in production or if something had changed with the API we hadn't noticed and can't find any documentation for.

[kmay]

Well crud. I see this too in testing. Here are the steps I took to test:

1. create a course and 2 assignments.

2. grade 1 assignment.

3. export grade book before making changes

4. mute the second assignment and grade it for all students.

5. export grade book again and check final score column. It is correct and includes the muted assignment grade.

6. compare to GUI, see that 'treat ungraded as 0' score matches the exported final score.

7. check the api, see that final score does NOT match the GUI or the exported final score.

8. unmute assignment. 

9. check the api, see that the final score now DOES match the GUI and the exported final score.

10. curse loudly.

11. open a ticket with Canvas support.

I thought muting was only for keeping students from seeing that grade while the item is being graded. 

Here's the API calls I tested: 

/api/v1/courses/<courseID>/enrollments

/api/v1/courses/<courseID>/users/<userID>?include[]=enrollments

Is there a different API to use? 

[kmay]

From the ticket I submitted, "Our Engineers are aware of this behavior and are working on a resolution."

[kari]

 @kmay ‌ I submitted a ticket last night and got the same response! I am glad it is not me not understanding terminology.

[rake_9]

Oddly, I'm so glad to hear this.  We are not crazy or unobservant, after all!

[kari]

Now on to the next crazy item...

[rake_9]

Has anyone heard any details about this?

[kari]

I have not gotten any updates on the ticket I have submitted. 

[pgo586]

Seems like a clear bug to me. Hope that Instructure acknowledges this and prioritizes its resolution, as many institutions are affected by it!

[PSU_Tony]

Here we are in January of 2018 and this is still causing problems, especially for people that knew nothing about this. Not sure why we have to discover these known issues ourselves. Not every problem can be labeled working as intended. For those of us that use a tool to pull the grades to our SIS, we cannot afford for our faculty to lose trust in the LMS gradebook. 

[Stef_retired]

 @PSU_Tony , I just checked with our support team on this, and a fix for this is already in the works. If you haven't yet submitted a support ticket, you might want to do so, because that way you will receive updates on its progress.

[PSU_Tony]

Thanks stefaniesanders‌. The fix went in due to our conversation with Instructure leadership. The point of my post was to voice my frustration over this known behavior not being communicated out, which was very costly in our case. 

[kari · Accepted solution]

Hello  @PSU_Tony ‌ I just got an email that the Canvas engineers deployed a fix.  I am testing to verify that this is the case on our end. But, just so that you should know! 

[kari]

From Support:I'm showing that the example you have provided is correctly including the muted score when calling the enrollments API. We put in the unposted_current_score,
unposted_final_score, unposted_current_grade, and unposted_final_grade values to indicate muted scores. 

[vanzandt]

This same behavior also impacts the final grade that is passed during the Sync Grades to SIS process. We finally had to program in API checks in our external final grade system, to determine if there were muted assignments in the gradebook, and refuse to Sync until the assignment/s were unmuted. Before adding in this check, this issue was effectively deflating entire courses worth of grades (significantly in some cases), and in a few cases that were not caught in the submission process, it required grade change forms for entire classes of over 500 students.

We brought this "other final grade" (different than final grade in gradebook export) up with our CSM (Dec 2016/Jan 2017?), pushed and pushed, and were told that other schools had dealt with it through documentation. They did update some of their documentation at the time related to Muted assignments, and I think that's when they added in icons in the total column when assignments were muted.

[kari]

vanzandt‌ It looks like canvas might have added a field - unposted_final_grade that is where muted are still calculated. 

[vanzandt]

Thanks!  My understanding is that they have added it to the API as a new field that you can call, but I don't believe they have changed their Sync Grades to SIS process to call this new final grade field. In my opinion, it should be changed for the same reason that they stated in their bulletin, “not consistent with most teachers’ intent when using the muting feature."  I've posed the question to our CSM, and am waiting to hear back whether the Sync Grades to SIS feature was, or will be, updated.