Differential grades for different sections on the same discussion

[JimPorto]

Alpha and beta are sections in my canvas course and I would like this to be real-time, so as graded discussions are posted by alpha, beta can review them without assigning a grade to beta. Can this be done?

[ryan_corris]

Hey @JimPorto!

I am going to answer based on my interpretation of your question.  If this is not what you are looking for, please reply with additional details of the specifics of your situation.

If both sections of your class are assigned a graded discussion, the Gradebook is expecting a grade for the students in each section.  One thing that might work for your situation is to go into the Gradebook and excuse the students in the section you do not wish to assign grades.

Please let me know if this is what you were meaning or not.

Thanks!

[JimPorto]

Thanks. Here is my setup.  I have two sections.  One section submits a discussion assignment that I grade.  The other section reads this assignment and makes comments on it but their participation is not graded. The gist is I would like to be able to give grades to one section and not to the other OR to be able to have different grade values for each section within the same discussion assignment.  It sounds like your workaround will help with the grade/no grade but not the different grade value scenario.  How precisely do I excuse a grade in the gradebook?  Thanks again.  jim

[ryan_corris]

Probably one of the easiest ways to excuse students is to click Grades in the course Navigation menu.  I would then apply a filter to only see the section of the students you want to excuse from the assignment.  Enter "ex" for the grade for the first students in the column for that discussion.  Press Enter/Return on the key board and then do the same for each student until all of them have been excused form the assignment.

I tried to set the default grade to Excused for the assignment once I filtered for the section.  It gave a message stating that the default grade had been set for the number of students in that section, nothing was changed in the gradebook.  I am thinking that maybe you need a numerical grade for this to work.  Feel free to try this though to see if it works for you. To set the default grade, hover over the title of the assignment in the Gradebook.  Click on the three dots that appear to the right of the title and select Set Default Grade to se if this method works for you. (Only typing "ex" gave me an error.  Typing "excused" Gave me a confirmation method, but nothing changed in the Gradebook.)

Good luck and I hope you find a way to make this work with your workflow!  Would love to hear your results, which may help other Community members too.

[JimPorto · Accepted solution]

Thanks Ryan...that got me on the right path.  I could not give an excuse to the whole section with your method, but what did work was to type "ex" in the gradebook directly once an individual student's grade was selected. The downside is you have to do each one, but it doesn't take long.   I think a nice feature Canvas should add is the ability to set grading and other parameters for different sections on the same assignments. jim

[Gabriel33]

If you have a lot of students, you could export the gradebook (maybe filtered for these assignment discussions), fill out the student grades to be excused as EX in Excel of another spreadsheet editor, and then import it back.

Since Excel (and likely most spreadsheet editors) allow you to copy the same value over multiple cells, it should be easier (for large classes) than filling each one in the gradebook.

[JimPorto]

Workable solution to the problem.  Thanks.