How do I turn off "new gradebook"

[gasstationwitho]

I made the mistake of turning on the "new gradebook" feature for my course.  Now my TA can't enter grades.

I can't find any way to turn the "new gradebook" off again.  (It looked like a toggle before I turned it on, but the toggle disappeared.)

How do I return to functionality?

This is my first quarter using Canvas, and it may be my last one.  If it continues to be so lacking in features and so buggy, I'm going back to hardcopy paper grading and gradebooks.

[kona]

gasstationwithoutpumps, Welcome to Canvas and the Community! I’m sorry to hear that you’re having a lot of frustration with using Canvas for the first time and I’m happy to try and help. 

Per information provided with the release of the New Gradebook - New Gradebook: FAQ, you can’t turn it off once you’ve enabled it and “you enable late policies or even manually adjust the labels in the Grade Detail Tray.” You are also correct that a TA can’t enter grades in the new gradebook. This is a known issue and more information about this can be found here - Are TAs not supported in Quizzes.Next? 

Yet, in doing some research to answer your question, it sounds like there might be hope of getting the new gradebook turned off. It sounds like there is a bug in the system that the Canvas Admin at your school could use to turn off the gradebook for the whole institution and it would revert your gradebook back to the old version. More on this can be found here - https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-13998 - Yet, this might be in an Admin only area so if you can’t access it then direct your Canvas Admin to this discussion and they should be able to view it. 

Hopefully you can get the gradebook switched back, but regardless of the outcome I hope you can work with the Canvas Admin and other support people at your school to help improve your Canvas experience. I just helped all of the Adjunct Instructors at our College move to Canvas - some had been using it for a while and as a College we’ve been using Canvas for 5 years - and while there were a few hiccups this semester, overall with some training and support they have seemed to be doing pretty good with it and not having any major frustrations. 

Hope this helps!

Kona

[joseph_clark]

Kona, I don't see any mention in that Quizzes.Next link about problems with TAs grading in the *new gradebook* itself. Is that just a given that problems with the Quizzes LTI are also inherent in the new gradebook?

[kona]

 @joseph_clark , I just did some double-checking and apparently as long as TA's have the permissions to grade they ARE able to grade in the new gradebook. Sorry it took me so long to circle around and get back to this!

[gasstationwitho]

Every time I get an answer to one of my questions, my opinion of Canvas sinks lower.  You put up a beta feature with an on/off switch to turn it on, but then it can't be turned off again?  Really?  No way to back out of a beta feature?  That's not beta software—that's not even ready for developers to include in a developer-only branch.

A gradebook that TAs can't enter grades in?  Seriously?

And I thought that a gradebook in which there was no way to set the treatment for missing assignments was bad enough.

How long has Canvas been in existence?  Why haven't they gone out of business already for producing such clearly unfit-for-purpose software?  Wait, I know the answer—the people who decide to buy the software never use it.  The complaints of those who are forced to use it are ignored.

[kona]

gasstationwithoutpumps, all of the issues with the gradebook were mostly known issues and made available via the Release Notes‌ and the New Gradebook: FAQ. Each Institution that uses Canvas then had the individual option to turn the new gradebook on, leave it as an option for faculty, or to not allow faculty to use it. Based on what you've said it sounds like your school decided to have it as an option for faculty to use if they wanted. Do you know if they sent out the any additional information related to the use of the new gradebook or offered training for the people who decided to turn it on? 

When I give faculty the option to turn on a new Canvas feature that is in Beta I always make sure to send out relevant information about the pros, cons/warnings, etc so that way faculty can make an informed decision about whether to use it or not. If you don't believe you got this type of information from your school you might want to contact Canvas Support at your school to see if they can better assist you and answer your questions. I did a quick search online and found the Canvas Support information for your school - Canvas for Faculty.  

The history of Canvas starts with two grad students who wanted to make a better learning management system. If you are interested you can read more about it here - BYU grads introduce education-savvy software | Deseret News. As for who made the decision to license the Canvas software, I'm not sure how it worked on your campus, but at ours we had a committee that was made up of mostly faculty and then the key players from Online Learning and IT. The faculty were the ones leading the decision making and the tech people were there just to make sure there weren't any huge issues - so would our systems play nicely together, were there any security concerns, etc. After reviewing our options (so different learning management systems), Canvas was the unanimous choice by the group. We've now been with Canvas for over 5 years and our faculty routinely rate their experience with Canvas as being positive to very positive - What do Faculty think about Canvas? 

Change is never easy, but I hope you are able to make use of the resources and people willing to help at your school and here in the Community so that you have a better Canvas experience in the future.

Kona

[JudyDurkin]

I still do not have an answer to the question: How do I turn the grade book OFF? I have not entered anything into it - so just ignore it?

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi there, @JudyDurkin ...

There aren't any settings in Canvas courses that let you completely turn off the Gradebook.  The best you can do is to hide it from your course navigation menu (so that there is a crossed-out eye icon next to it).  This means that students in your course would not see the "Grades" menu when they sign in to your course.  If you want to hide the "Grades" course navigation item in your course(s), you can follow the steps in: How do I manage Course Navigation links?.  You might consider keeping the "Grades" button at the bottom of your course navigation menu...so that you can leave room for the other course navigation menu items that you are using instead.  Hope this helps a bit.