[Student Grades] Re-format What-If Scores feature to reduce confusion

[mbmacdonald]

Problem statement:

The "What-If Scores" function is confusing for both the student and others who may need to look at a student's grades: parents, athletic coaches, etc. It appears, to the student, that they can enter their own grade. If a student doesn't read clearly, they may think that they have found a "Canvas hack," and change all their grades to perfect scores, and then be surprised when their *actual* grade in the course is not high. There have also been reports of students changing their scores to What-If grades and showing that screen to a parent or coach (in order to confirm athletic eligibility). There is nowhere on that screen that distinguishes between the "What-If" score and the actual score (the only way to know that a score in the Score column is a "What-If" is to hover over it with your mouse to reveal a tooltip).

Proposed solution:

I propose that "What If" score should be a separate column (or tab) clearly labelled "What If Scores", and the real scores should always remain visible. I personally would prefer to have the ability to disable this feature at the course and/or account level (to support institutions and individuals moving towards ungrading), but I understand that has been discussed thoroughly and will not be pursued as per this archived Idea Conversation: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Disable-quot-What-If-quot-Feature/idi-p/314617... However, perhaps its visibility could be toggled on/off by the students themselves? Perhaps it could be toggled off by default, but when toggled on (for the grade-grubbers), it should be very clearly that it is a What-If Score and not the real thing.

User role(s):

admin,instructor,student

[mbmacdonald]

Circling back several months later to say that I still really hate the what-if feature.

If I am making an assignment worth Zero points, and marking it Complete/Incomplete, why should the student be able to click on that check mark and then type in a number? Worse still, when they do click on that Check mark, it reveals the zero to them! Or if I was using some arbitrary number of points on the back-end, that number would be revealed to them.

I just want them to see a checkmark!