Gradebook Sync with Multiple Due Dates for Assignment

[ZACHARYYINDRA]

I have created different groups for my class to easily extend due dates to students with extended time. While testing how grades would be displayed on my school's gradebook (Focus) I created an assignment, created different due dates using the aforementioned groups, and attempted to sync the grades. I am unable to post grades as I'm getting a message stating "Assignments without due dates or duplicate assignments cannot be synced". The groups are displayed:

I have verified that there are no duplicate assignments, and there is a due date (multiple, techinically). I removed the groups and assigned the assignment to "everyone" which allowed me to post grades. I have seen guides from Canvas recommending the use of groups to assign content to students with accomodations such as extra time, so I imagine this has to be something that can be done (Canvas guide on doing just that. Note it says nothing about syncing grades). I've also assigned tests to students in the past and had to add a student to a separate assignment to extend the time available without issue. Below you can see the assignment details.

Below you can see the message I am getting when I try to sync my gradebook. Again, if I switch the assignment so that it is assigned to "everyone", I can post grades just fine.

 Does anyone have any suggestions or advice to fix this issue? I've included screenshots of my groups, the assignment details, and the grade sync message. Thank you in advance!

[VPundir]

@ZACHARYYINDRA Can you please confirm that:

1. The assignment is set to post grades automatically? (This is default Canvas behaviour, but worth checking).
2. The assignment is NOT set to be anonymous - as you may imagine, if the assignment is set to be anonymous, then posting of grades as they come in will compromise the anonymity, so Gradebook will not show the grades.

If you find that the problem is that the assignment is set as anonymous, then you can release the grades of all marked groups (or sections) by doing a manual release. BUT this will unmask (remove anonymity) any future submissions.

[ZACHARYYINDRA]

1. The assignment is indeed set to post grades automatically. I was able to post it to my gradebook when I changed it from a group assignment to "everyone".

2. Anonymous settings for individual assignments does not seem to be enabled for my district as I am unable to find that option anywhere.  It is not set as anonymous in speedgrader either.

I see that james_whalley has recommended not using groups as students can see who else is in a group.  I thought if I selected to "Assign Grades to Each Student Individually" they wouldn't be able to see each other.  They recommended using differentiation tags instead which sounds like exactly what I want. I'm working with my IT department to enable differentiation tags and hopefully that will allow me to circumvent this issue.

[VPundir]

Hi @ZACHARYYINDRA 

@james_whalley is correct: Groups are for groupwork. And naturally, students need to know who else is in their group. So this should generally not be used to differentiate submission date based on things like disability-related standing extensions, extensions due to extenuating circumstances, etc.

However, I do not see a problem with using sections for setting different dates, esp. if the sections have benign names. Technically, students can see who else is in their section - but this is much less prominent than, say, groups. Also, when you assign an assignment to a section, the students in the section just see that the assignment is available to them, not that it is assigned to a particular section.

[james_whalley · Accepted solution]

@ZACHARYYINDRA While I cannot assist with the syncing issue, I want to call out where you wrote, "I have seen guides from Canvas recommending the use of groups to assign content to students with accomodations". I would warn that you should never create a Canvas group or section to differentiate students who need accommodations, as students can see who else is in a group or section. This is part of the reason Instructure has created differentiation tags.

[ZACHARYYINDRA]

This sounds like exactly what I'm looking for.  It seems that my district has not enabled this as an option.  I've sent an email to our IT department requesting it be enabled as I see no reason not to do so. Thank you very much for bringing this useful feature to my attention!

[ZACHARYYINDRA]

My IT sent this to me in response to my asking about Differentiation Tags.

"Hey Zach, I talked to our Canvas admin about this. Seems like a better solution than creating groups based on accommodations regarding student privacy concerns. However, we think it will still cause sync issues with Focus as it creates a separate assignment for each differentiation and since those don’t exist as matching sections in Focus, grades wont sync."

Do you know if this would cause an issue with syncing grades and, if so, a workaround for the problem?

[james_whalley]

@ZACHARYYINDRA I know nothing about Focus, but it seems absurd if it cannot account for the differentiation of assignments in Canvas. I don't know any courses that is devoid of assignment differentiation.

I found documentation at How do I set up an assignment to be sent to Focus for grade passback? that reads:

"

Notes: 

• If you use differentiated assignments to allow different sections different due dates, you must also include a due date for the remaining students using the Everyone Else option in the Assign to field [3]. However, only the specified sections are included in the grade sync.
• When an individual section is added to an assignment, the Everyone option changes to Everyone Else."

I would think that means you can differentiate assignments and it should work correctly.

[ANGELASTEIN032]

If we can no longer utilize multiple due dates for students in the same section, the differentiation tags is now useless. If our teachers were going to use differentiation tags to assign students with accommodations with additional time, it will no longer sync that assignment to Focus. So, I see this "upgrade" that Instructure has done with Focus as doing more harm than good. I see that all of the time we invested in differentiation tags, to teach them to our teachers, is wasted.

[james_whalley]

@ANGELASTEIN032 Ahhh...is it not syncing the Everyone Else section of the students?

[ANGELASTEIN032]

That is correct. I have spent over a week going back and forth with Instructure techs sending us help guides as if we are just uneducated on how to assign and sync. Today, I finally got her to tell me that it is "due to the Focus upgrade." We can no longer accommodate students individually and assign to "everyone else." The only way to accommodate is to extend the date for all or for a section at a time. OR they have to change it to assign the same date to all students after the students complete, as an option, in order to sync.

[ZACHARYYINDRA]

@ANGELASTEIN032 Am I understanding correctly that your school uses Focus and Canvas sync isn't working at all for you? I'm using Focus and I haven't had any problems with syncing grades. I have two differentiation tags that I use in each assignment and assign "everyone else" to the reminder of students.  

[ANGELASTEIN032]

You are understanding correctly. I put in a ticket with Instructure and the tech stated that it's due to the Focus upgrade. Did you allow Focus to upgrade this summer, as we did? I have heard that a few districts refused the upgrade and they have not had all of the issues we have had. We have had missing teachers in courses that we had to add manually to give them access, grade syncing completely non-functioning, and now this issue with not being able to sync if there are any students given additional time in the "assigned to" on an assignment. The tech claims that a section of students must all have the same due date to sync now.

[ZACHARYYINDRA]

I'm unaware of a new Focus update that occurred this summer. Focus had a large update last school year for us. Do you know of a way to check what version of Focus you have?  The most visible change in our big update last year changed the menu from the top of the browser to the side. I'm in Pinellas county, if it helps.

[scaudill]

My school district is also having the same issue this year when syncing assignments to Skyward Qumaltiv. We have been a Skyward and Canvas district for the past 10 years, and assigning multiple due dates for assignments was never an issue until this year. With some investigating, it looks like the errors are occurring if individual students are assigned a different due date from the rest of the class (student identified with extended time). If a teacher assigns multiple due dates for separate classes (period 1 US History has a separate due date from period 5 US History), the assignment will still sync to Skyward. The issue is when an individual student has an extended time, and the due date is different from the rest of the class; then the error occurs, and the entire assignment will not sync to Skyward for anyone in the course. This is a massive issue because the only way around this is to assign the same due date for all the students. Teachers are unable to make accommodations for students who receive extended time. We are getting massive pushback from parents and teachers. 

Something has definitely changed over the summer. Like I said earlier, we have been using Canvas for 10 years, and this has never been an issue until now. 

[ANGELASTEIN032]

I'm not one of our Focus users, so I am unsure of the version, but I do have some positive news to share.

This weekend, I was finally escalated to SIS L2 and had a tech there who was helpful. They are having the engineers look at the issue with multiple due dates not allowing sync, but in the meantime, he let me know that a remaster of the gradebook will send the scores. He was right, and when I remastered, the scores completed for that teacher. We were able to verify, in Focus, that the grades were there.

Additionally, he enabled the ability to sync differentiated assignments. This should allow some students to be assigned to an assignment even if the entire section isn't assigned. It will send the others are "excused" to Focus. I don't believe this was "ready" yet, but he enabled it early for us since we discussed why multiple due dates were important and I think he knew I was beyond upset with the last tech's support. This is likely a "coming soon" that we have early, but I am excited to test it with our next teacher who wants to use this!

[scaudill]

Please keep us updated on what the engineers say about fixing the multiple due dates not syncing. The remaster feature does not fix the issue for us. My ticket is still at the SIS Escalation Queue.

[ANGELASTEIN032]

The remaster of the gradebook has been working for our teachers. 

For the differentiation tag issue mentioned above, we had to enable it in our instance for our teachers to be able to use it. If the new feature the Instructure tech enabled for us works (still haven't been able to test it yet), we should not have trouble with differentiation tags and assigning to just some students, rather than all. I'll let you know once I have a teacher who is using it tests the sync.

[scaudill]

I am also curious if there is a way to check what version of Focus we have. Does anyone know how to check this?

[JamesCorbin]

Has anyone seen a fix to this? I differentiate with the "until time". Students don't see if others have extended time. The due dates on everyone within the assignment is the same. Students learn to look at the "until time" as their actual due date.

If I delete the other assignment "until time" groups so there is no longer an "everyone else" and it just says "everyone", syncing works. If I do that, however, I lose my documentation of given students their allotted extended time.

Thanks for any input.

[ANGELASTEIN032]

Have you tried a remaster? If you don't know how to do this, go to Grade Sync, Utilities, and then choose Remaster.

[JamesCorbin]

I had not tried that. I did with no luck. This is the message I receive when I try to sync.

[ANGELASTEIN032]

Yes, that's the same error we all get. You have to remaster to force them to sync. I put directions for that above. It is working for our district's teachers.

[DanielleKlemick]

My school uses TAC and Canvas, and I am getting the same error. I tried to remaster my gradebook, but that did not fix the issue either. 

[ANGELASTEIN032]

We have two instances of Canvas. It has been working well in our main instance, but in our instance that is for one school only, it has not. I put in a ticket with Instructure on this. You may want to put in a ticket. It may be that the SIS team tech I spoke with in my initial tickets enabled a setting that was not automatically enabled.

If you aren't a Canvas admin for your district, you may want to reach out to them to ask that they put in the request.