One ongoing issue with Canvas is its inability to separate the score a student earns on an assignment from the weight or value of that assignment relative to others in the SAME grading category. This design assumes that all points are interchangeable across all assignments, which oversimplifies the complex grading systems many educators use and doesn’t reflect the varied ways teachers evaluate student work. I see that people have been requesting functionality like this since 2017 (eight years?!). Let's get caught up!
EXAMPLE 1: Suppose I assign a 10-point reading quiz and a 10-point peer review. I want the quiz to carry more weight in the final grade because it assesses content knowledge, while the peer review is more about participation. In Canvas, unless I manipulate assignment groups or alter point totals artificially, both assignments affect the grade equally—even if they serve very different purposes.
EXAMPLE 2: If I assign a short 5-point homework task and a major 100-point project, Canvas treats each point from those assignments equally unless I use weighted assignment groups. But this workaround doesn’t offer the fine-tuned control needed when individual assignments WITHIN the same group need different levels of impact on a student’s grade.
Our previous platform, Schoolloop, allowed teachers to scale the value of an assignment independently from the raw score—meaning I could assign a 10-point quiz but have it count as 20 points toward the final grade. That flexibility made it easier to reflect the educational importance of different tasks without inflating scores or adding unnecessary complexity to the gradebook structure (inflating raw scores or distorting the original rubric.). Canvas’s current approach limits grading accuracy and forces teachers to create awkward workarounds. A more nuanced system would better align with how assessment is actually practiced in diverse classrooms.
Canvas could add an optional "gradebook weight" multiplier for each assignment.
Teachers would enter the raw score as usual—say, 10 points for a 10-question quiz—but also have the option to set a separate "scaled value" that determines how much the assignment counts toward the final grade. For example, a 10 item quiz could be scaled to count as 50 points if it’s particularly important, or just 5 points if it’s less significant. This would allow a student’s original score (e.g., 8/10) to remain intact while letting the teacher control its actual weight in the overall grade (e.g., scaled to count as 40 points) WITHIN the same category.
Teachers who prefer a consistent point system can ignore this feature, while those who need more flexibility would gain a powerful tool. This small addition would significantly enhance grading accuracy and align Canvas more closely with real-world teaching practices.
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