Missing Assignment Tag in Gradebook

[shannon_larrea]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

In other  Gradebooks, we have been able to enter an "M" is a student hadn't submitted an assignment.  It would read the grade as a zero.  This is similar the EX feature you already have in Canvas.  I know in the individual view I can changed all Ungraded homework to read as a zero but this isn't practical if I don't grade the homework the same day it is submitted.  My teachers only enter a zero if student was present and that's grade they earned.  If they are absent, etc an M is a great way to distinguish they are still allowed to turn in the assignment but still affects their overall grade if it isn't turned in.

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2018-01-06) .

:smileyinfo: We recognize that the specifically requested "M" was not implemented.  M, like EX, is not a standard symbol globally, so the feature was intentionally designed without it. EX was already in place and the decision was made not to remove it.  We do not plan to add any additional non-standard symbols.  EX actually causes a lot of confusion and problems for our international users 😞

[Renee_Carney]

This idea is now Under Consideration.  Find out more about the idea stages at What is the feature development process for Canvas?

[cwruck]

Hey Folks! I hope you noticed our new status. "Under Consideration". It means, we think this is a good idea and despite the fact that we can't get this done in the next 6 months, we're looking for ways to squeeze it in sometime in the future. We've been working on some things that I think are going to solve your problem, but I'd love to hear what you think.

The first phase we are planning is to give teachers the ability to add a "Tag" to every cell in the gradebook. The idea is that you'd be able to give a grade and a tag to an assignment with a grade or to an excused assignment. The statuses will include Missing, Absent, Late, Not Applicable. All four of these tags will be able to be reported on~ so we'll be able to roll up a summary of the number of each status for each assignment or each student. The tags will be communicated to the student, so they will also be able to see that summary.

The second phase we'd like to implement involves setting late and missing rules that would assign the tags and deductions automatically when something is missing and late. We're doing research right now~ trying to learn as much as we can about all the late and missing policies out there. Please join our discussion, if you'd like to give us more feedback about your late policies! What are your late rules? We'd love to hear it!

[shannon_larrea]

This is great news!  I like the Tag idea too.  This will help a lot.

[keyaiko]

Thanks for the explanation of what is planned - that's exciting news. The tag idea would serve our school well, especially if students and observers can quickly see a summary of all missing assignments.

[jackie_hubbard]

Any updates to the timeline to make the tagging feature available in gradebook?

[Renee_Carney]

We do not have an update at this time.

[mary_lukasik]

I am excited about the missing assignment tag and also the idea of late assignments.  I currently deduct points for each  day an assignment is late with a cutoff date beyond which it cannot be turned in. 

[mattk]

If you're still looking for feedback on how to develop this feature in the most practical and useful manner, I have three components that I believe should all be present to make this feature an addition that would make K-12 teachers even more excited about Canvas.

These three components together would create a very effective workflow for both teachers and students:

1) Missing Tag to communicate with students and parents;
2) 0 in the gradebook so the missing assignment still affects the student's grade;
3) and keeping the assignment in the student's To-Do list so they still see that they need to complete the assignment.

[jnovak]

Allow teachers to add customized gradebook notations. For instance, if a student has completed part of an assignment but needs to add additional files permit the teacher to add "INC" as a customized option.

Adding the EX has been helpful, but having additional ways to provide notations would be useful for communication with students and parents.

Other options may include:

RS - Re-submit

MU - Make-up

EXT - Extended time

RV - Revise

[lkinnel]

I am definitely looking forward to the implementation of this feature where assignment cells in the gradebook can be tagged late or missing and students can see reports on this. It will be crucial to me that part of what instructors are given the power to define about the missing tag is what percentage score an assignment with this tag will be assigned (assuming all grade calculation in Canvas continues to be based on scales defined in terms of percentages). I know that lots of people like to count missing assignments as zeros on a 0 to 100% scale, but there are those of us who don't and, for us, having 0% as the only possible mapping for assignment marked as missing would mean we couldn't use the feature. I grade assignments on what can be thought of as a 6.0 (High) to 0.0 (Low) scale where 6.0 (A+) is mapped to 100% in Canvas and 1.0 (F, but submitted) is mapped to 50%. Continuing the linear relationship results in 0.0 (missing) corresponding to 40%.

I can mimic this currently by defining a grading scheme which gives the letter grades A-D typical percentage equivalents (e.g. 100-90%=A), gives F the range of <60-41%, and gives M the range of <41-0%, and then always entering my grades as either letters or percentages rather than points, and entering an M (or a 40%) for a missing assignment. One minor problem with this workaround is that when students look at their grade on a missing assignment which, say, has been called a 5-point assignment for weighting purposes in Canvas they see 2 (M) out of 5, which is odd. Once Canvas has implemented a missing tag, I would much prefer they just see the M, since they have NOT actually earned any points on my 0 to 6 scale, but the forced mapping to percentages in Canvas and the inability to hide points in the student view of grades makes it look like they've done something to earn points.