Link another canvas course to an assignment using external tool

[ThomasArruda]

I teach chemistry courses that have labs associated. I typically have two separate Canvas courses, one for lecture and one for lab. Since lab counts as a percentage of the lecture course, I would like to link the lab Canvas score to the lecture through an assignment.

For example: in my LECTURE course I create a assignment group call LAB and weight it 25 % (the amount that it counts for in the lecture total). Within this assignment group I create a generic assignment out of 100% and I manually input the final lab score at the end of the semester.

Does anyone know if it is possible to import the total score (so that it updates dynamically) from LAB into this generic assignment using the external tool assignment type? It seems like this would be a simple code job, but I cannot seem to find any information about this.

[TrishaMeyer1]

This is an intriguing idea that you should submit to the idea board once it reopens. It sounds like something you can do in Excel, where a cell can "look" to another cell and update when that other cell is updated.

At this point, though, I wonder if it would be easier to use the LAB course as informational only and just tell the students to look to the LECTURE course for all their grades, including lab grades. Then just use the Lab Assignment Group in the LECTURE course for all the individual grades and not just the final lab grade as an import. (This is assuming you don't have to report the LAB grade separately as well, per school policy. I'm assuming these courses are created for you by your institution, else you would do it all in one course from the get-go.)

I think it is possible to import grades to Canvas via a csv file, but that seems like more trouble than it's worth for what you are wanting to do.

[ThomasArruda]

Thanks for your response! I've since confirmed with my institution's LMS specialist that it is not currently possible.

Your suggestion would work for my situation, but would be very award for labs that are taught by someone else (they would have to continually send grade updates). For the time being, I'll keep them separate and let Canvas compute the grade without lab, it will just be out of 75% rather than 100%, which will still be fairly accurate.

I am hoping that the folks who do development for Canvas monitor these posts for making improvements. This seems like it would be a pretty simple fix.