[Gradebook] Warning when using Hide Grades on an Automatic Posting assignment

[dkpst5]

Problem statement:

A teacher clicks "hide grades" while grading an assignment that is set to an automatic posting policy. As the teacher later continues to grade that assignment, the later grades are posted automatically. The teacher gets confused as to why (some) students are seeing their grades even though the column has the eyeball in the header. The teacher asks Canvas support for help.

Proposed solution:

Selecting "hide grades" when an assignment is set to an automatic grade posting policy should display a warning that this only hides current grades, that future grade changes will be posted automatically. Optionally, this could include a button "change grade posting policy to manual too".

This is comparable to the "not assigned to all students" warning the Assign To box gives when removing "everyone". It's warning of an often unintended (but sometimes desired) Canvas behavior that is not always obvious to the majority of teachers. The related action (posting grades on a manual policy) is an expected route, rarely causes issues, and does not require a warning -- though there would be no harm in prompting the teacher, "done grading, switch to automatic for this assignment?"

Potential issue: If this changes the GPP, future course imports of this assignment will have the altered GPP.

User role(s):

instructor,ta

[dkpst5]

Alternative solution to same problem:

While it's likely a more development-resource-intensive change, it may be better there's another idea to have "scheduled grade release" in the Assign To box [or elsewhere] that could also solve the same problem in a different way. Link to that idea: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Ideas/Gradebook-Settings-quot-Grade-Release-Date-quot-Opti...