How to enter "excused" for 980 students in the gradebook at one time?

[erika_carta]

I have a class of 1000 students and 20 students are taking a quiz on let us say Day 1 while 980 students will take a different test on Day 2  I would like to know how I can enter the word "Excused" for the 980 students in the gradebook column when the other 20 students have taken the test.  It is too time-consuming to select "excused" 980 times.  Using the default grade only works for actual figures, not words.  I do not want the 980 students to be penalized for not participating when they were not assigned the test.

[RobDitto]

@erika_carta, if the 20 students being assigned the quiz can be  individually assigned, removing "Everyone Else" as an assignee would accomplish a very similar result to excusing the 980.

[RBourgeois]

Your solution works in the case of a quiz that everyone will eventually take, but I want to give everyone excused for a series of assignments that are optional unless they choose to complete them for an extra grade. But, my gradebook has a default grade set that I don't want sent to PowerSchool once the deadline passes as it will harm student averages when choosing not to do the extra assignments should have no effect. I have a difficult time believing there is no way to simply fill all grades with anything the teacher chooses (score or grading criteria) as it's such an obvious and minor task to add to a grading system.

[Ron_Bowman]

@RBourgeois -

What @RobDitto originally posted is correct and works very well for what the original poster wanted.  You make an assignment and assign it to 20 people in the class only.  The other 980 will not see the assignment and will not receive a grade.  

In your case, I am not sure how the above would work with power school (I don't use it or know how it interacts with Canvas).  As to your question about the easy way to assign a grade or scoring criteria to all students, there is a 50% solution - you can set a default grade for all students.  The reason I said 50% is that it is only numeric grades as far as I know, i.e. you can't set the default to ex for excused.

I am not completely clear about your task where you state that you have a default grade for assignments, but then you state that you don't want it sent to PowerSchool.

However, with a little bit of work (not the easy solution you and everyone else would like to see) I believe you can do what you want.  Here I will assume that you need to assign excused to all the default grades you don't want sent to powerschool(once again I don't know how it interacts with Canvas, so the following may not work at all).

1) set the default grade for the assignment(I am assuming this default grade is something that is not counted)
2) export the gradebook and in the file delete all assignments but the one you want to modify
3) do a search and replace on the default grade and replace the grade with ex (for excused)
4) save the changed csv file and then import it back to the course.  All students with the default grade have now had it changed to excused.

Let me know if that is what you are asking.  Or, as I suspect, I am completely off base.

Ron

[RBourgeois]

Thanks for the suggestion. What I meant about the default grade was that I went into the Gradebook Settings in Canvas and enabled the 'Automatically apply a grade for missing assignments' option.

I can see what you mean by your solution but I don't think that will work for me. Canvas automatically synchs with PowerSchool every night, changing the grade to what is in Canvas. The only solution that I have is to go into Canvas' gradebook and set all of the grades to excused one-by-one. Then, when Canvas synchs, PowerSchool's grade for the assignment reads excused. But, this is a very time consuming way to do things. I wish there was a way to simply go to the Canvas gradebook and fill an assignment's grade with excused for everyone with a simply click or two from the assignment options at the top. I can set a default grade that way, why not a status such as excused?

[Ron_Bowman]

@RBourgeois -

I agree.  I was surprised the ex would not work with set the default grade.

I am confused why uploading a grade of ex into canvas would not work, but changing them 1 by 1 will?

Ron

[RBourgeois]

I assume the coders for the assignment default grade tool limited input to numeric values rather than allowing alphanumeric characters to allow for status as well as a score. But, if entering Ex is allowed to be entered manually to force a status of Excused, it should also be allowed as a default value. Clearly, the developers either a) have never been in a classroom or b) didn't consult with educators about how they might use the feature. To me, adding this capability is common sense from a practical standpoint.