Marking Assignments "Missing" en Masse

[alice_w_gold]

Imagine you are a middle-schooler, and that "missing" button is the only thing that will get you to even somewhat begin to care about whether or not you do your work. Your teacher has warned you a million times not to ask her if something will be graded, but because of the years you have spent in the broken American education system, you know you aren't doing anything unless it's going to be graded. You aren't in class to learn: you're here to get the grade that your parent expects so you can keep your phone privileges.

Now, imagine you are a teacher that is already so *7&^%$ing strapped for time, and for your entire career, you've had to manually mark assignments missing at least 50,000 times.

Well, you don't have to imagine it because this has been my experience. In the modern day and age of AI and genius programming, you would think that a huge company like Instructure. could figure this out for all the teachers that they serve. Yet, to my knowledge, they still haven't. PLEASE!!!! Correct me if I am wrong. And, PLEASE, if I am not wrong, give me something that will be easier to use!!!

You have no idea how high my levels of frustration and anxiety can get, but this missing en masse "missing" feature has an intimate front row seat to my 'gnashing and wailing" almost every day in my classroom , especially when I just want to go home because contract hours ended an hour ago.

"But, if I don't mark these all missing now, nobody will have them done in time. Okay, I'll just suck it up for another 10 minutes."

10 minutes x 3 days x 7 years. Surely your programmers can help a girl out so that she doesn't have to make a career-change. That might seem extreme, but I am serious. My husband passed away 20 months ago, and I am making all kinds of effort to get home to my kids sooner....so, naturally, I am taking the 25 minutes I have taken to get this request right. I need to get home!!!! I don't want to mark this stuff missing anymore.

And FYI, I just got the error code from your bot. I don't want to leave out this bit of entertainment. I especially love #NobodyGotTimeforDat

The following labels are not available here: missing, teacher, gradebook, manual missing, programming, feature, update, mass, button, frustration, AI, IT, development team, admin team, Canvas CEO, customer service, the customer is always right, save time, nobody got time for 'dat

Video Explanation can be Found here.

[KyleighBecker]

Hi Alice! I am an instructional designer at a university, but I used to teach middle school as well. 

If there is a due date assigned, it should show up on the "To Do" list on their Canvas dashboard. Do they not pay attention to that? And you are trying to get their attention on their upcoming assignments? If my understanding of your video is correct (please correct me if I am wrong). 

The missing function is specifically for things that are past due -- if it isn't past due yet, then yes, it will be a pain to manually mark everything as missing. 

One option you could possibly try to make sure they get their assignments is is to set an auto-grade for missing assignments (in your settings under gradebook). That way, if they miss the assignment, it auto-posts as a 0 and that might kick their butts into gear. Of course, as long as the assignment isn't closed, then they can go in and complete that assignment. (This is assuming that all the assignments are submitted digitally). 

Also, once you grade a missing assignmsnt that has been submitted (via online submission) then that missing marker should disappear shortly. You shouldn't have to manually remove the "missing" -- it might switch to "late" but if they submitted the missing tag should disappear. (My playback speed was 1.2x so I might have missed part of that and Loom won't let me rewatch without an account). 

Good luck!

[dbrace]

Hi @KyleighBecker,

Provided you with some options to consider:

1. using due dates (which puts the item on the course's calendar)
2. using until dates (which close out a student's ability to submit something and can be differet from the due date)
3. using the "Automatically apply grade for missing submissions" feature (How do I apply a Missing Submission policy in the Gradebook? - Instructure Community - 963 )

There are additional notes in the support guide but I share the following below:

The Missing Submission policy lets you automatically apply a grade for all missing submissions in the Gradebook. A submission is labeled missing when the assignment is an Online submission type, the due date has passed, and it has not been submitted. Only submissions with a status of Missing are affected by the Missing Submission policy. The Missing Submission policy is set per course.

Have you tried those?

Have they helped?

-Doug