Speed Grader Orange Dots

[Luara]

I'm new to Canvas, and I cannot figure out what the orange dot means next to each student's name in the upper-right dropdown menu in Speed Grader. I though it was used to indicate that the student had submitted work, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I have 2 sections of the same class. Only a small handful of students have submitted their final projects so far. For one section, ALL the students have orange dots next to their names (yet, only 3 of the 12 have submitted anything). For the other section, only the 4 students who have submitted documents have orange dots next to them. So, now I can't figure out what it means!

Can someone explain the meaning of the orange dot for me? Thanks!

[chriscas]

Hi @Luara,

The orange dots will generally indicate that there is a submission/resubmission waiting to be graded for that student.  The  How do I use the student list to view student subm... - Instructure Community  guide has more info about the different status icons you might see in the SpeedGrader student list.

It's weird you say that you have a class where all of the students have an orange dot, but only a few students have an actual submission. I have never seen that happen myself, but maybe someone else will have experience with that situation.  You could also contact Canvas support to see if they have any info on that.

Hope this info helps!

-Chris

[Luara]

Thank you for the reply! That's what I thought it meant earlier in the semester, but this assignment has me baffled by it. The entire class has orange dots, but the assignment isn't due until next Wednesday, and most of them haven't even started it.

[jenoch]

I just got off a call with Instructure/Canvas support:

Canvas said that they could see a change in grade for all students (that have the orange dot). At one point all students received a 0 and then that 0 was removed for all students. When that happens, all students receive an orange dot.

There is a missing submission policy that might have triggered this during an import from a previous semester. Most likely what happened, after the import, the quiz kept the original due date and the missing policy was triggered, which gave everybody 0s. During an import, all of the students received a 0 for the lab. When the grades were reset, all students showed a false positive submission. 

Solution:

In the future, during the import, don’t forget to remove the assignment due dates.

OR

You can turn off the missing submission policy until after the import and change to current semester due dates.

[Ron_Bowman]

@jenoch -

What you state is exactly what I was going to reply with to the the question asked by @Luara .  You have to make sure that imported assignments are not graded once they become imported to the class.  There are several options on how to do that - depending on where the import is coming from and where it is going.  The easiest would be to turn off the assign 0 to all ungraded assignments in both courses and then after the import and dates set, turn that feature back on for the course

Ron

[Luara]

I wouldn't even know how to import an assignment. Import from where?

[Luara]

I don't know what an import is. This occurred during my first semester using Canvas, so I didn't import anything from anywhere.

[jenoch]

Hi Laura, I was helping a colleague at the institution where I work and I went searching for a solution in Canvas Community and saw the post. I think we got the root of the issue with her course. In her case, she had imported her course from a previous semester and the orange dots arrived with the imported course and was triggered by the missing grade policy. In your case, if this is a newly created course with no imported assignment from another Canvas course, then I will let Canvas weigh in and help. Sorry my post did not help you. Good luck!

[Ron_Bowman]

@Luara -

In that case it is a little different.  An import is a course import.  In Canvas you have the ability to import content from an old course into a new course.  What @jenoch mentioned is what it appeared you were seeing.

My guess now is that you had the assign 0 to all ungraded assignments set.  Then when making the assignment you set a due date for the first section and that the date was already past.  That triggered the assignment of a 0.  you then corrected the date for that section thus clearing out the scores, but leaving internal information indicating that the student needs to have an assignment graded.

I just tried something in my playground to see if that was the case, and for some reason I did not get the automatic grade of 0.  

However, the actual matter is somehow the students with no submission had a grade assigned and then the grade was taken back.  That process - however it occurred - resulted in the orange dots for all the students.

Ron

[Luara]

Hello,

Interesting! No, I did not have the assign 0 to all ungraded assignments.

[Luara]

This isn't the solution for me (original poster).

[Ron_Bowman]

@Luara -

I tried again with a new assignment creation.  With the gradebook option set to assign 0 to missing assignments, I created an assignment with a past due date and until date and with online submissions required.  Students were assigned a 0 in that case.  When I edited the assignment and changed the due date to one in the future, the 0's remained in the gradebook for those students.

So, my question now is, did you see that the students had a grade of 0 in the grade book and remove them? If so, then that is the source of the orange dots.  If not, then I am not sure exactly what happened in your particular instance.

ron