[Student Grades] Monitor student grades in all courses

[marthazumack]

Our teachers and student support managers, who keep track of a student's progress across all courses, have an overwhelming need to view all students grades even though they are not one of their teachers. We would love a summary view of student's grades just like students and parents can see when they click on Grades from the Global Navigation. Currently, our staff have to go to each course to see a student's grade in that course, which is far from efficient. We would like for staff to simply be able to click on the student's name and see their progress in all courses they are enrolled in.

I am aware that Dropout Detective provides this functionality, but we do not need the extra features it provides.

Note: This was previously requested in the old community.

[Chris_Munzo]

OK, Gideon, let me know.  I'll be traveling most of the coming week, so email will be a better way to get me.  Not sure when I'll have the chance to log into this Community.

[SethBattis]

Some folks from the University of Michigan talked (in a very inspiring way) about what they've built like this at InstructureCon: Using Canvas APIs to Serve a Campus Early Warning System​ -- it would be great to have at least a basic student overview built into the system (although it raises some interesting questions around who should be permitted to see it).

[Chris_Munzo]

Gideon -- Have you looked into this cross-border question yet?

[asatkins]

I think you just make it a permission and let institutional admins hash that out themselves! K12 is going to be way different than higher ed on this one

[asatkins]

We would absolutely love this, especially this part - "We would like for staff to simply be able to click on the student's name and see their progress in all courses they are enrolled in."
We have built an LTI that does just this- listing students/courses/grades/progress, but having to maintain it separately feels a little cumbersome for a feature that most LMSs have built in
Progress measuring especially has been hacky and cumbersome to figure out because the API pulls in "no points" and "no submission" assignments and counts them against student progress in the course. We've had to tackle this with a two prong approach- flat progress (a % of course assignments completed) and a number of 'missing' assignments, showing the number of graded assignments the student is behind the currently assigned assignment according to due dates. That way if the ungraded assignments are counting against them we can check it against the 'missing' number to see they're actually on track.
A student that is showing 20% finished with the course that is 40% complete but has 0 missing assignments is still on track, that missing 20% are ungrad-able assignments and shouldn't be counting against her. We're trying to work those out of the curriculum, but some of our writers went a little rogue at the beginning so there are a lot to sort out

[sbrown11]

I'm higher ed also (faculty), and I would love this in my academic advisor capacity.  Because we are a small school, I serve as the advisor to students in my major area.  I get the "early warning" notifications that come from our Banner system (if the faculty member puts one in), but it would be great to have it in Canvas and to get more granularity to it.

I definitely see the access issue - perhaps having to include FERPA waivers or something.  However, there must be a way to grant levels of security access such that administrators can see everything, advisors can see some things, faculty see others, etc.

[marthazumack]

According to various university FAQs on the subject of faculty access to student grades, the answer is that faculty with a "legitimate educational interest" may have access. Faculty who would have "legitimate educational interest" could have a course or admin role specific to them.

See for example this paragraph from LSU's FAQ:

May I access confidential information about students?

Access to personally identifiable information contained in educational records may be given to appropriate University administrators, faculty members, or staff members who require this access to perform their legitimate educational duties. Faculty members do not have access to student academic records unless their normal job duties specifically require access. This type of access is termed “legitimate educational interest.”

[KristinL]

We have an academic mentor program in place at our high school, and this would simplify the process of checking students' grades. I think it would encourage teachers to actively check their students' progress in their classes. Right now, we can masquerade as one of our mentees, but it is a lot of clicking. This would be a neat addition to Canvas.

[jason_castaldo]

We have three different people who monitor grades. One handles English language learners. Her job is to make sure that they are handling their adjustment to a new language in all of their classes. A second checks grades for students who have learning support plans, and a third monitors the general population. Currently the first two have to resort to having students screen shot their grades and email them on a weekly basis. The third completed this task using our previous gradebook and can no longer do it since the number of students is too great.

[kona]

I know it's not exactly what everyone is looking for, but check out this work around suggested by Chris Long in this discussion - Accessing all student grades...