Is it not possible to Enable "Restrict View of Quantitative Data" AND "Hide totals in student grade summary" simultaneously?

[mbmacdonald]

Hi, I am experimenting with the new feature "Restrict Student View of Quantitative Data" in our beta instance. I enabled it at the root account level (in beta). I have 2 questions:

1. a tooltip on the setting says: "When selected, this setting will limit the view of new courses' quantitative (numeric) grading data. Students and observers will only see qualitative data, which includes letter grades and comments." What does "new" mean in this context? Because it seems that the setting is now available to enabled in every single course in the beta instance. This doesn't seem right

2. It seems that when you enable this setting, you lose the ability to select the other course setting "Hide totals in student grades summary" - the checkbox disappears and is not available anymore.

Regarding #2, there is a workaround: if you check the "Hide totals in student grades summary" FIRST, and THEN click "Restrict Student View of Quantitative Data" then you get the desired result: students only see their "letter grade" (which might be pass/fail or "meets expectations") for each assignment and no "final grade" at the bottom. However, this is not a workaround that will work for my users. If the process is not simple, they will not do it. I am trying to convince them that they can adopt alternative grading practices and still use the LMS, but not if there are so many "gotchas" in the setting configurations.

FYI: In the example I set up, I created a grading scheme that was simply a binary "Satisfactory/Not Satisfactory" and applied it to each assignment. if "hide totals" is not checked, then the student sees a ludicrous "Final Grade" of "Satisfactory" - as if all the "Satisfactories" have been averaged!

[mbmacdonald · Accepted solution]

FYI: I did open a ticket with Instructure support (before posting this question here). They have just gotten back to me. Let me briefly summarize their response:

1. The feature only *works* for new courses. Although the checkbox will be there for all courses, and you can check it, it won't do anything. This makes me a little nervous, I'm not sure I trust it (not that I think they're lying to me, but it would just be very hard for me to check this). I wish there was some error message that would pop up if teachers try to enable it for older courses. 

2. Great news: Instructure said their engineering team is already looking into this!

[JenMurphyA]

Hi @mbmacdonald ,

At this time, the "Restrict the view of quantitative data" option for courses displays and works for new as well as existing courses. If your admin enables the setting in the account, then an instructor or another user with permission to edit course content can choose to restrict the course view for students and observers, displaying only letter grades and comments. If the feature is enabled and locked or disabled and locked at the account level, then the feature is either enabled or disabled for newly created courses. 

There is some current information in the Release Notes as well as inHow do I restrict the viewing of quantitative data in an account?

I hope this helps!