[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]

Matthew -- I can't speak for Instructure's development roadmap.  But if you review the Instructure Partner Portal, you'll see that there are over 100 of us that provide complementary functionality.  No software can do everything, but Canvas has been open enough to allow niche players like AspirEDU to address the needs of some schools.

[mmikulski]

I understand where you're coming from. Personally, we don't need all the

bells and whistles of DD, so I'm perfectly happy making some custom .HTM

files for our teachers, admin and counselors at the start of every year --

and spending the grand or more that DD would cost us on other things

On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 11:15 AM, chris@aspiredu.com <instructure@jiveon.com>

[mmikulski]

Best thing you can do, Martha, is get savy on making custom .HTM files for

your staff members, that they can use to quickly 'jump' in and see the

'View Grades' view of any student. It only takes me about 30 minutes total

for all the staff at our school of roughly 500 kids... I'm not claiming I

invented this idea -- as I first found a version of it somewhere else on

Instructure's support / community forums -- but here's my process:

First step is to log in as a Canvas admin, go to 'Permissions --> 'Account

Roles,' and add a new role (I call ours 'GradesChecker') that has the

ability to 'View All Grades.'

Next, go to 'Settings' --> 'Admins' and give the 'GradesChecker' (or

whatever you called it) account role to all staff that you want to allow to

check student grades.

Third step is, go to 'Settings' --> 'Reports' --> 'Provisioning' and export

a Users CSV file. Import that file into a spreadsheet editor (Google Sheets

does just fine), and then sort the data to delete all teacher accounts. You

should also delete columns that aren't useful... basically, all but two

(I'll past an example with made up names):

Canvas ID Student Name

1159 Belvedere, Diego

645 Carhart, Holden

889 Figuerroa, Gus

1026 Michaels, Rami

180 Stanley, William

Fourth step will be to add a third column, that will generate a weblink

that goes straight to each kid's grades... here's what the code would be

for the first kid on line 2, if you're using Google Sheets:

="[" & B2 & " | &CHAR(34)&]
"

Use the black square that appears on the bottom right of the cell to extend

the code downward to cover all rows...

Fifth step is to share the spreadsheet with your staff with viewing

privileges, asking them to first make their own copy of it, then delete any

rows (users) that they don't want to have to scroll through. Have them

copy-paste JUST THE CONTENTS OF THE THIRD COLUMN, when they're done paring

it down to the kids they're interested in, in an email to you

Second-to-last step is to use a text editor (such as Notepad in Windows) to

first paste the text from the column they emailed you, and then to save the

file as Type = 'All files', adding the staff member's name as the file name

and the ending of .HTM (this will allow a web browser to default to reading

the file). Example: JaneBecker.HTM

Last step is to reply to the email request with an attachment of the custom

.HTM file you made for them. Now, they have a document that they can use to

quick check their select list of students' grades!

This is how we use the in-built features that Canvas has, and other free

tools already out there, to save money. Again, I'm sure DropoutDetective is

a fantastic tool when more analytics are required... but if you just want

to enable certain staff to more easily check in on the academics of kids

not necessarily in any of the sections that they teach, this does the trick!

On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 6:30 PM, martha@wolseyhalloxford.org.uk <

[reynoldsn]

Matthew,

This is great stuff!  Will following the steps you listed, allow the 'grade viewer' the ability to click on the course/grade and dig deeper on the grades?   e.g., to see individual assignment grades for each course?

[reynoldsn]

Shandy -- how's the progress going? We figured out how to have our 'grade viewers' access the student grades, but they are not able to click on the link to view the assignment grades.

-Nancy Reynolds

[mmikulski]

I believe one step I may have left out was, that you have to create a new

role inside the many various permissions that different types of users can

have, that allows for viewing of a gradebook, or something like that...

Basically, I add all of our teachers to that special role (I think I named

mine 'GradesChecker') and then they are all definitely able to click in and

even go as far as looking at individual assignment details.

Of course, I believe there's a bit of an unintuitive way that you have to

go and get at instructions and other descriptions of an assignment, I don't

think it's as simple as clicking on the assignment for the student, but

that's just how canvas has their pages mapped... Something where you have

to look at the directory tree that canvas lists, and click back one step,

or something like that. Sorry but I'm not in front of my computer to be

more precise!

[Hildi_Pardo]

Hello. We are a K12 district.  We are now starting our third year using Canvas.  With each year, we learn more and use more features of Canvas.  We have created custom Admin Roles so Principals, Assistant Principals, Directors of Counseling, and Counselors can have access to all courses and students in their sub-account.  And while they can pop in to see any course and how a student is doing in that course, what they really need is an easy way to see how well a student is doing across all courses.

We've given them this role in Canvas, but currently it's not giving them information they really need.

Let's revive this Idea!

[heather_hurley]

This would be extremely helpful not only for Admins, but also for teachers that need to access certain groups.

[Chris_Munzo]

We have a solution called Dropout Detective (which can also be branded as “Grade Guardian”) that is used by over 200 Canvas schools and does exactly what you ask:

• Retrieve data from Canvas every night and risk-rate students by looking at performance across all courses.
• Give Principals, Assistant Principals, Directors of Counseling and Counselors to view personalized lists of students.  We can automatically filter by sub-account AND we give you the ability to create personalized dashboards of just the students assigned to me.  (e.g. Sports coaches could have a dashboard of just their players.

Feel free to reach out to me if you would like to learn more.  Also  @heather_hurley ‌

[Hildi_Pardo]

Thanks Chris.   Yes, I've seen the product being pitched on this idea (and "Grade Guardian" is more positive than "Dropout Detective").      When I add, vote on, or comment on an Idea on Canvas, I'm asking for Canvas to develop the solution.   There are SOOOO many wonderful products that partner with Canvas, and we simply cannot subscribe to all of them.      The DATA is already in Canvas, and the people have the Roles needed -- we are asking Canvas to improve the product and make it easier for its customers to access and use the information that's already in the system.