Allow 'Treat ungraded as 0' in New Gradebook

[jeremy_stevens]

It would be very useful to be able to use the 'Treat ungraded as 0' feature of the current Gradebook in the New Gradebook, especially once the New Gradebook becomes the default in January 2020. I understand that not having this option seems to be by design, however there are use cases relevant to our tertiary institution that I would like to outline to see if they gather support among the Canvas Community. Please feel free to add your own use cases in the comments if this is relevant to you as well.

Our teaching staff use the Total column in the Gradebook to view how well a student is doing overall in their unit attempt. Not having the 'Treat ungraded as 0' feature in the future will mean that:

1. At the start of a teaching period – if say, 2/5 assignments have been completed by students and graded – the Total column will display a grade that is the scaled-up version of where they are sitting, working on the assumption that the other assignments are to be ignored. It would be possible for someone to achieve 100% in both completed assessments, and the Total column would then display a score of 100%. This is not an accurate reflection of where the student is at in terms of their overall completion of the unit and means the instructor has to do manual work, or ensure they set up assignment groups in particular ways, to try and figure out an accurate representation of student progress.

2. At the end of a teaching period – once all assignments have been completed by students and graded – the Total column will display a scaled-up grade for any students who have not completed any assignments or are missing grades. For these students, in reality, their non-submission is equivalent to a score of 0 – however in the New Gradebook, the Total column will not reflect this. This makes it difficult for instructors to review their cohort's progress and standing once the teaching period is complete, before those grades are to be formally sent to the SIS for release.

The only suggestion I've seen so far to mitigate against these issues is to use a Missing Submission policy.

How do I apply a Missing Submission policy in the New Gradebook?‌

This is not an adequate solution in our case.

In the case of example 1 above: at early stages of semester, students won't actually have 'missing' submissions – those submissions will be due in the future. A Missing Submissions policy would not apply.

In the case of example 2 above: Missing Submission policies do not apply to No Submission or On Paper assignments, LTI assignments, or assignments that do not have due dates set. We also cannot force Missing Submission policies at the account level, or via API when each individual Canvas course is created, to ensure consistency across our institution for such a crucial display issue. This would mean that even if it were an acceptable solution in other regards (and as per example 1, it isn't quite there in this case), we would be asking all of our institution's instructors to apply the same Missing Submission policy, and ensure that the exceptions to the policy as above also had 0 grades implemented where students had not submitted work. Not only is there scope for error here across large institutions such as ours, but this seems a disproportionate amount of effort to ask instructors to go to simply so that they can see an accurate reflection of their student's total grades for the overall unit.

This is a crucial issue for us, as we need instructors to be able to see how their students are doing throughout, and at the end of semester – this information informs moderation, future assessment design, learning outcomes, and reporting to faculty.

Others have suggested that the Missing Submission policy feature be amended (https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/13954-apply-missing-submission-policy-to-all-assignment-types?...‌), and while I agree that it could use further flexibility, in our above case it would not quite solve our problems. It would be a simpler solution to allow the new Gradebook to set 'Treat ungraded as 0' to on or off instead. I understand that the Gradebook CSV Export is still calculating the Unposted Final Grade anyway – so the 'Treat ungraded as 0' score is still there in the system, just not being displayed at the UI level.

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2021-02-20) - Canvas Community 

[Steven_S]

 Why can't 'set the default to 0' be applied to assignments at the beginning of a course so that it will apply to any subsequent enrollments?

I agree that this would solve the problem.  However, using this preemptively at the beginning of the course, will lead to course totals that are discouragingly low at the beginning of the semester.  There needs to be a way to clearly display to students how successful they have been so far, and that the zeros are not yet final.

I think that having both a current total and final total column would help explain the zeros in pending assignments to students.  The final total column could have a treat ungraded as a default grade option that displays to both students and faculty according to the setting selected by the instructor.  In contrast, the current total column could use the existing settings.  Then a separate function to finalize default grades for missing submissions, could allow instructors to apply a missing label and truly enter the zero assignment-by-assignment, student-by-student, section-by-section, or course-wide, at appropriate times.

This year, I wanted to start the course with the default grade set to 0 but unfortunately found that this setting only applies to already enrolled students. When another cohort is added to the course during the semester, I would have to set the default to 0 again, and again, and again (if that would even work).

The work-around you describe will work in the meantime, with explanations to students about the way grades are calculated and the purpose of those zeros.  Keep track of the date each cohort is added, and you can re-use the set default grade option on the "new" ungraded assignments.  As long as you do not chose to let it replace existing grades, only the ungraded assignments will be updated.

[Steven_S]

 @rosemary_odonne you may also like this idea which would let your open enrollment course set due dates that are relative to the enrollment date https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/15900-self-paced-courses 

[kathryn_wood]

I find the ability to toggle the "Treat Ungraded as 0" on and off helps when I'm doing a quick analysis of the course as a whole.  It's the toggling that's helpful, while the 'grade % for missing submissions' option is also a destructive edit.  I accidentally gave all the missing work full credit because the Canvas produced instruction video didn't do a good job explaining it's the grade given, not the percentage deducted -- I then had to do some time-consuming investigation to make sure that when I edited out the full credit I wasn't also penalizing a student who had actually earned it. 

Rather than having us vote up or down after the fact, why didn't Canvas request instructors at a variety of campuses supply them a wishlist of keep and fix before creating this clunker? 

[kathryn_wood]

It would be nice if the default for the student side to be for the missing work to be treated as 0, and let them then click on the box to show only the graded work -- I get the logic is that some instructors load up all the assignments at the beginning and don't want students be frightened by a low-seeming grade, but on smart phones and some tablets, that box is at the bottom and no matter how many times I point out that they have to click on the box, I still get a number of emails after final course grades have been posted asking why transcripts don't match what is on Canvas.  It's gotten to the point that my Out of Office email response in December and May is basically a primer on how to find the "treat as 0" box.  I still have a student, after goodness how many emails, who is still not getting it.

[Steven_S]

That is related to another idea you might like: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/15377-late-policy-missing-assignment-default-value 

[Steven_S]

I think "Treat ungraded as zero" went away, in part, because of confusion similar to what you describe at the end of every semester.  In the new gradebook, final grade calculation relies on "set default grade" which enters a selected score for all ungraded students in a given assignment. As you have noted it is a destructive change, rather than a toggle, however at the point of final grade calculation there is not much remaining use for a toggle.  It is also, one assignment at a time, but this allows many courses to enter those zeros as the course progresses so students see the impact to their grade closer to the time of a missing assignment.

I think that if all canvas did was set the default student view to treat ungraded as zero, there would be many students at my community college dropping out without even asking why their grade is so low.   

[Steven_S]

You might also like https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/8329-the-two-types-of-grades-reported-on-canvas 

[kathryn_wood]

Thanks.  Went to that thread, and “voted” but it hasn’t gotten much traffic since it was started in 2017.  Which is one of the reasons I suggest that they survey folks more aggressively about what we see in the ‘real’ world, rather than having to listen to us whine... er.... discuss intensely our dissatisfaction.

[greg_gutkowski]

It seems to me that eliminating a feature without replacing it with the other way to accomplish the same task is a major step back.

[Steven_S]

The treat ungraded as zero feature was 'broken' in that it displayed the grade to teachers without showing students that it was their final grade.  As a working alternative, it is possible to add a zeros that will show up to students one assignment at a time using the set default grade feature.  When a toggle is necessary, it is possible one student at a time in the individual view of the gradebook.  This discussion might lead to a new option to set default grades by student or all at once for the entire class.  When set default grade does not provide an adequate replacement, discussing why here could give canvas useful feedback about what type of solution is needed.