Is it true that we cannot get grades from a concluded enrollment via the Canvas API?

[joulesmc2]

Hello Wonderful Developer Community, 

I have a question for you all. I hope I explain it alright and you can provide me with some insight. I must first preface by saying that I am not the developer of the LTI for which we are having an issue. I am the Canvas admin trying to figure out whose tree we should be barking up to fix their system so that our expensive new tool works the way we want it to. 😄

We are using the assessment management system, HelioCampus Assessment (HCA), in which we can link Canvas assignments to CLOs and PLOs and collect data for college-wide assessment so long as students are in active status in the course within a data collection term. 

Unfortunately, our Canvas instance is set up to conclude student enrollments as soon as an instructor submits grades into our SIS. We have no control over this process right now, and we have learned that this is a unique case based on our integration. It is not a simple change for us otherwise we would just adjust that! 

We also cannot really devise a better data collection term because of limits for our own college and HCA. The only acceptable solution comes from being able to retrieve course grades for specific assignments with concluded enrollments. Also, note that restoring the enrollment is not an option.  

I was reading this post from 2016: Previous Discussion: Quiz-submissions-API-for-completed-enrollments 

It seems they were having a similar issue as what I am describing and the solution was to simply restore the enrollments in Beta or Test. 

I would like to be able to go back to the HCA developers and say that there may be a fix using the API.

Here is an example: 

An assessment for Program 1234 is set up to collect data from Aug 1st to Dec 12th. 

During the assessment period, there is a twice daily refresh where assignment scores from linked assignments aligned to PLOs from Program 1234 in Canvas are pulled into HCA and recorded. 

This daily refresh happens every single day for the entire data collection period. 

The courses that have these assignment links are of various lengths, one is 8 weeks, one doesn't start until the second 8 weeks, one is 14 weeks, etc. 

If any course ends and faculty input their grades to SIS, during the next SIS and Canvas refresh, the enrollments are set to concluded. 

HCA refreshes again and all the scores that were there previously for that course are overwritten as not-assessed. 

This is because the enrollment is no longer 'viewable' by HCA because it has been concluded. 

From what I am reading in the Canvas API, this is almost like the student has been deleted from the course even though we can go and look at their grades within Canvas. Is there a workaround for an LTI developer? 

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Thank you in advance for any advice you have from the Canvas end. I do notice that in the discussion aforementioned that this may be a feature request. If so, is it actually on the books still? 

[JamesSekcienski · Accepted solution]

@joulesmc2 

I'm not sure how the HelioCampus Assessment integration is set-up/designed, but there is Canvas API support get submissions (which includes grade information) for concluded enrollments.  List submissions for multiple assignments 

If they are using an API Developer Key they could potentially have access to this API endpoint.  However, if they are only following the LTI1.3 standard, they wouldn't have direct access to this endpoint.  If this is the case, it may be due to limitations with the LTI standards, but perhaps someone with more knowledge about these could chime in and share how LTI's handle concluded students.

In the meantime, i would recommend continuing to work with the HelioCampus Assessment technical support to try to see if they can address this issue.  Since it is overwriting assessment data when an enrollment is no longer 'viewable' perhaps they could instead provide an option to users to control whether it should overwrite the last score or leave the last score when an enrollment is no longer found.  Alternatively, perhaps they could simply leave the previous score and include a warning indicator when an enrollment is no longer 'viewable' to their integration.  They can also contact the Instructure Partnership team if they are seeking additional support/advice on building/improving their integration to better handle concluded enrollments in Canvas.

[joulesmc2]

Thank you so much. This was very helpful.