Assignment that is due in May is marked as zero, students grades are negatively impacted.

[lauren_r_hickma]

I am having challenges with my gradebook for a course.  I have an assignment that is not due for another 5 weeks, but it is showing up in the gradebook as a zero points score, which is taking most of my student's grades to a C or lower.  I have tried removing the assignment and reloading it, checking the due dates, etc.   Normally when an assignment is not due yet in Canvas there is a - (dash) instead of a zero.

No students have uploaded work for this assignment yet.  What can I do?

Many thanks for your help. Lauren Hickman

[SusanNiemeyer]

Can you please post a screenshot of how you have set up this assignment? 

Also, did you perhaps copy the assignment over from a previous course? Or did you "import" the assignment and not remove the dates?

Lastly, what do you mean by "remove?" Did you simply remove the assignment from your module? Or did you go into Assignments and "delete" it?

[JessicaDeanSVC]

In addition to Susan's suggestions, I would recommend checking to see if there is a default grade set for the assignment, where all students automatically get a certain grade on an assignment (just as 0%) until manually updated.

[Ron_Bowman]

@lauren_r_hickma -

What @SusanNiemeyer stated about the copied assignment was my first response - if you copy an assignment without changing the dates and you have treat ungraded as 0 selected in your gradebook settings, then the assignment is copied in with a until date that has passed and everyone gets a 0.  However, if you deleted that assignment and recreated one with the correct dates and it still comes up as zeroes, then I can't think of why. 

Can you provide a screenshot of the assignment settings - that is the only place I can think of that would be causing this issue.

Ron

[cromijn · Accepted solution]

Hi @lauren_r_hickma ,

I am so sorry this has happened in your course! That can definitely put a damper on anyone's day to see grades drop. One thing that may help here is trying to override the "0" grades. One option I have used in my courses is to apply a default grade to the assignment. In the Gradebook, if you rest/hover your mouse/cursor on the title of the assignment column,  a stack of 3(sometimes it looks like only 2 with longer Assignment names/titles) dots will appear on the right side of the column title box. By clicking on those, a dropdown menu will appear and have the option to set a default grade. What is neat is that you don't have to enter anything into the box, and then all you have to do there is click on the box to "Overwrite already entered grades" and then click on the "set default grade" button. This will replace the previously entered 0's with the "-" that is typically there.  

I hope this helps you with this assignment so the grades are listed correctly! If this doesn't do the trick, please let us know so we can continue looking at this with you!!

[RussellStaples]

I am having the same issue. For example, an assignment that was due at 10:40 am this morning already had 0% placed for students that have not submitted anything. I would think it should not be graded not should I have to override the grades without submission.

[Sherry8]

Hello,

I am having the same issue. The trick with Setting the default grade option only works if you override all the grades, and some of my students have already submitted an assignment and been graded. I've had to manually go in and individually delete the zeroes for students who have yet to submit.

Is there a way to avoid having to do this moving forward? Or do I just need to remember to set the default grade and override when assigning each assignment?

Thanks.