Mark assignments that need grading in exported grade book

[antenangelil]

Hello, 

When my university used Blackboard, I could export the grade book (for offline grading) and it would mark assignments that students had completed but that I had not yet graded as "Needs Grading" in the CSV file. This made it easy to do things like assess completion rates, run a "Replace All" to add multiple grades at once, and so on. I don't see this in Canvas. When I look at the grade book in Canvas, there is an icon indicating something that was submitted but not yet graded, but when I export the gradebook, those fields are just blank in the CSV file, making it impossible to differentiate between assignments that have not been submitted versus assignments that were submitted and not graded. 

How can I can get the exported version of the gradebook to mark the fields (i.e., the student-assignment cells) that are submitted but not yet graded? Alternatively, if this is not an option, how do I "batch replace" those particular cells with a number grade (rather than doing it one-by-one)? 

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hi @antenangelil ...

While I don't think I have a complete answer for you, what you described from Blackboard does sound interesting when exporting gradebook data.  For your first question, I don't think this is possible in Canvas.  What I would recommend to you, if you would like to do this, is to submit this as an Idea here in the Canvas Community to the Ideas and Themes area of the site.  That way, it can possibly have an opportunity to be voted on (voting is open two times a year), and you can participate in that process.  I'd encourage you to look through the following documentation on how the voting process works and how to create a new Idea:

Instructure Community Guide - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

Check out the links under "Ideas and Themes".

Again, I know this isn't a complete answer for you, but I hope the above info will be helpful in some way.

[antenangelil]

Hi Chris, 

Thank you for the quick reply. That's unfortunate that this is not an existing feature, but I'll be sure to submit it as an idea. 

In the interim, is there any way to quickly apply a grade to all submissions of a particular assignment within Canvas? I see how to do it for each student, but with 120 students it's a bit time consuming to do this individually. 

Thank you. 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello @antenangelil ...

In the interim, is there any way to quickly apply a grade to all submissions of a particular assignment within Canvas? I see how to do it for each student, but with 120 students it's a bit time consuming to do this individually.

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I think this Guide will be helpful to you: How do I set a default grade for an assignment in the Gradebook?

Please let Community members know if you have any other questions about this.

[antenangelil]

Thank you for the additional resource, Chris. Unfortunately, since the default grade function doesn't seem to differentiate between students who submitted the assignment and those who did not, it won't work for me. I don't want to award points to students who haven't submitted anything.

Might be useful for others who read this post, though. Thanks! 

[willmoin]

thanks have same query - I thought you were on to a solution withe Set default Grade but as the guide says: "Submission status is not factored into default grade application."

Such a pity these use cases aren't considered when the feature was originally developed

[antenangelil]

I agree completely. It doesn't even make sense that a grade would be awarded regardless of whether a student submitted an assignment or not. I'm not sure what the point of that feature is. 

Honestly, the transition from Blackboard to Canvas has been nothing short of frustrating. So many simple, useful features that are available in Blackboard cannot be replicated in Canvas, and the response is always to "submit it as an Idea" -- to say nothing of the innumerous "Ideas", some from many years ago, that still have not been implemented.