More descriptive statistics (at least, median and mean) for every column in "Grades" (gradebook)

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

One can see the mean for individual assignments in "Grades" (gradebook) but the median is not provided. Would like to see that as it is a crucial measure of central tendency in performance. For columns in the gradebook, that are an average of category assignments and an average for the course ("Total"), no descriptive statistics are provided at all. I would, at the very least, want mean and median provided, but, like for individual assignments, I'd like a graph of distribution of marks too. Thanks.

P.S. I'm aware of the boxplots in Course Analytics.

34 Comments
kmallen
Community Contributor

An instructor at our university brought up that this is a FERPA issue for us as well. We have small class sizes (sometimes in the 4 to 8 student range after drop/add time), and in smaller class sizes, the min and max scores can be reverse engineered. We'd like to see the grade distribution graph options expanded to include checkboxes to show/hide the low, average, and max scores. We would also love if the Settings could house the course default for the grade distribution graph, but it would be great if the settings could be overridden at the assignment level for individual assignments.

cameron_redsell
Community Participant

I teach statistics, so it would be nice to give my students literally more statistics to process. A simple histogram would be nice, and I think would address some of the issues I’ve seen around grade distributions. The issue, as I see it, is that boxplots hide data clumping. If a lot of people got in a certain range, or the grades have a wide variation (as they often do in math courses), then it’s hard as a student to see where you lie. “I’m above the median, but is that any good since a few people got 0?”. Essentially histogram would show bimodal data.

KseniyaFuhrman
Community Member

Please include Median on statistical reports for assignments. It is very frustrating to have to export the data to Excel, just to find this very simple value.

KseniyaFuhrman
Community Member

The issue about reporting Median has been raised since 2015. 
Dear Canvas, can you please add median to statistical reporting?

alexander
Community Explorer

I completely agree!  I prefer sharing the median exam score with my students rather than the mean.  This should be easy for Canvas to add.

cameron_redsell
Community Participant

Update: My students have started referring to the graphs in the grade book as "discount box plots", and I totally agree.

fridge
Community Novice

The feature in the Grades Tab of Canvas classes shows the distribution of grades for students, i.e. class low, class mean, and class high. I think it would be nice if there was an option to remove outliers, or at the very least, remove class lows = to 0. The way it's currently set up the data means nothing since students who dropped that class or didn't do that specific assignment make it so the mean is vastly lower than it should be and the low is always = to 0. It doesn't matter too much since the data is just for fun, but it'd be nice if they improved it so the data actually tells us meaningful information instead of irrelevant information skewed by outliers.

TapanPatel
Community Novice

This is absolutely an essential feature that should be available from Gradebook view. An instructor, at a glance, should be able to see basic information about:

1. median and mean

2. quartile scores.

With perhaps another click, an instructor should be able to see score distributions based on the course's grading policies (for example, how many students scored between 90-100%, how many between 80-89.9% etc.). 

Canvas - please listen to your users. This is core information that every other system I've ever used provided at the outset.

KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: On Beta
  Comments from Instructure

 

For more information, please read through the Canvas Deploy Notes (2022-08-03)

KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: Complete
Comments from Instructure

 

For more information, please read through the Canvas Deploy Notes (2022-08-03)