How does your school/institution handle incomplete grades? How long do you allow for incompletes?

[sbocard]

How does your school/institution handle incomplete grades?  We are in the process of moving from Blackboard to Canvas.  In Blackboard we were able to create columns for the Incomplete grades, and we used the notes for instructions to include any additional information.  

thank you … 

[ProfessorBeyrer · Accepted solution]

Per our college policy, students who receive an incomplete grade have a calendar year to complete the work and resolve an incomplete grade. This presents a challenge for us since our courses are set to be invisible to students after the semester end date. 

Here are the options we have at my college:

1. Manually enroll the student's user into a Canvas course next semester. Their work will not transfer over into the new course, but scores for the assignments they had done can be typed manually into the gradebook.
2. Create a sandbox course, add the necessary content and assessments, and then manually enroll the student's user in that course. This is of course more helpful if the instructor is not teaching the same course with the same assignments in the next semester.
3. Use a new section in the original Canvas course. The steps are to create a section inside that course (setting appropriate dates), enrolling the student in the section, and then giving the *section* (not the student) extended deadlines as needed for assignments.

All of these options depend on the settings and permissions of your Canvas instance. For example, the permission to create a section is linked to the cross-listing permission. Where I teach, we have cross-listing turned off during the term to reduce the risk of student work being "lost" when a section is cross-listed.

[gnoack]

Hi @sbocard 

My institution does what @ProfessorBeyrer described in his step 3.  I've had to do so several times and it works really well.  Be sure to also enroll the instructor in the new section or they may lose access, depending on the term settings at your college. 

[michelle_powell]

For your incompletes, do you keep the "Missing" dashes in the gradebook or do you add zeros to the missing assignments?  

We add sections to the original course the student was in and open it up for the student and the instructor. There is just debate about adding zeros or dashes in the Canvas gradebook until the missing work is completed.  Canvas holds the unoffical grades whereas our SIS program in the registrar's office holds the Offical grade. We use scripts to pull grades from Canvas to the SIS program and the registrar's office changes the student status to "incomplete" because there is not an incomplete status in Canvas.  

Just wondering what other institutions do?

[ProfessorBeyrer]

@michelle_powell that's a great question about zeros or dashes. Too often I have had students wonder why their final grade was so low when their grade inside Canvas was higher. They hadn't learned themselves to flip the switch to calculate based only on graded assignments. But I don't like giving automatic zeroes for missing assignments, especially since I give grace for late submissions, at least for a few minutes. So what I do is midway through the semester as part of my midterm self-assessment is zero-out all of the unsubmitted assignments. My messaging around this includes reminders about late submission policies.

For my students with incomplete grades that I keep in the same course (the solution you use), I would remove the zeros so that those students have an easier reminder of what assignments they have yet to do. We also have created a student-based role called "Inc" that we encourage faculty to use so they get a visual reminder on the People page for students who are working to resolve a grade of Incomplete.

[michelle_powell]

Thank you for replying!!