Missing Assignments Marked Zero Showing Up As 100% In Student Gradebook

[cmquinlan]

Last night, I had a student email me a video asking if I was 'messing with the grade book.' They said they had 93.72% in my class and every missing assignment had been given full credit even though they were marked missing. 

In my grade book, this student has 11% and all 16 of their missing assignments were given zeros. I don't believe I changed any settings and I definitely never awarded for credit for any missing work. 

Their grade book now shows the same thing I see although I didn't touch anything between the student sending me a video and their grade book becoming accurate. 

Any idea what happened?

[James]

@cmquinlan 

It sounds like you might have a missing submission policy set for your course with the "Grade percentage for missing submissions" set to 100%. What this does is to automatically award 100% of the points for an assignment that has not been submitted and is missing.

Their example shows 100%, but I cannot think of a case (but I'm sure someone has one) when people would want 100%. That means you get full points for doing nothing. What I do is set it to 0% to automatically populate the gradebook with 0s when students don't turn in work. If you work for a school that has a minimum grade to keep students who aren't doing anything from failing, you might want to set it to 50%.

Making matters worse is that the late submission policy works in the opposite way. The missing policy says what percent the student should receive, but the late policy says what percentage should be deducted. It's easy to get those confused if you're not careful.

These lessons from the Canvas Instructor Guide explains more about it.

• How do I apply a Missing Submission policy in the Gradebook?
• How do I apply a Late Submission policy in the Gradebook?

[cmquinlan]

Dang, I wish it was that but doesn't look like it. 

Thank you though!

 

[James · Accepted solution]

@cmquinlan 

I think I figured it out. I missed it the first time as the first screen was really blurry (capturing a still from a video is difficult)

When you look at the second image, you see the little revert button between the Missing and 5. That suggests that they were using the What If grades to play around with their grades and see what would have happened had they gotten those points.

Then, when I look at the first screen shot, it looks like all of those have the revert button.

There is a "revert to actual score" button near the top of the student screen -- but off the video they showed you (or at least what you captured).

This lesson in the Canvas Student Guide has more information: How do I approximate my assignment scores using the What-If Grades feature?

[cmquinlan]

Thank you so much! You've got eagle eyes. I knew about this feature but didn't think to look for the little arrow. 

You're a life saver 🙂

[GiovanniTibayan]

You are missing asigements