Students without 0's in Gradebook for Missing Assignments even though policy is set to automatically set those

[EvanDonovan]

In this term, we have several students without 0's in the Gradebook for Missing Assignments. However, our Gradebook Settings, under Late Policies, is set to "Automatically apply grade for missing submissions" of 0%. 

This is true in all of our courses, but only 2 courses this term appear to have this problem, and we haven't had it in any other prior terms that I know of.

Does anyone know why this might be happening, and how we could fix it?

It is a significant problem, since it's caused at least one student to have a false impression of how well they were doing in a course, until the 0's were manually added.

[EvanDonovan]

Note: Looking through the Gradebook History a little more, it seems like this might be affecting the same students for whom Canvas had earlier (incorrectly) set a 0 on assignments before the term, which we had to manually override.

See my ticket on this here. (It's marked as solved, but the solution that I was given seems either to be: a) don't copy courses between terms, or b) unset the 0's manually. We've been doing B, since A is not workable for us. But it seems like that may be causing other problems.)

So, in that case, are the students not getting the 0 set for a "missing" assignment, because Canvas doesn't treat it as "missing" if it had already been assigned a grade earlier? In that case, Canvas' own incorrect grade is what is initially throwing these off.

[JeffCampbell]

It does seem suspicious that it is primarily happening to students who experienced the other issue. You should have an email showing your prior ticket with the ticket number. You could comment on that ticket about your concern, but I'd recommend submitting a new ticket. If you do the latter, include the ticket number so that techs can identify the existing ticket if the two issues are related.

I understand it would be frustrating to submit another ticket. At least you know that it is happening so you can manually set the grade (doing it from Grades might be faster than using Speedgrader). Canvas techs should be notified so they can look into whether the other issue might have some lingering effects they did not predict, such as this. They will be able to dig deeper to investigate.

[EvanDonovan]

Ok, I will see about submitting a ticket to Canvas. I don't recall a time that Canvas tech support has actually solved one of our issues before though. In some cases they haven't even replied.

Just to clarify, when I said "ticket" earlier - it was actually just a forum post. I never even submitted on it to Canvas tech support, I think, due to the prior experiences I'd had with them.

[JeffCampbell · Accepted solution]

I see. Yeah, that is a post on here, which is a community forum made up of volunteers. Go to your Canvas page and click on Help at the bottom of the left hand menu. There is an option there to Report a Problem. That this is happening now, two years after that incident in your post, means it could be something else going on. Definitely worth linking your concern about it being related when you submit a ticket at a minimum.

That may be why the solution did not seem very effective to you at that time. It was the best that could be recommended because it was community volunteers trying to help you. This past summer a glitch developed related to assignments getting marked with 0's when copied. I'm wondering if it might be tied to that (a fix went out in September - https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Known-Issues/Investigate-how-the-missing-policy-triggered/ta-p/61...) in some way.

While techs may not always respond to tickets, if there is something that seems to be broken in Canvas's behavior, submitting a ticket can be helpful for them too. With what happened this summer, the more reports, the more points of data they can look at to determine the root cause. 

[SammiPJackson]

This happens when the submission type is an extension tool. I hate it.

If the submission type is set as online it will automatically make it a 0 and missing.

[EvanDonovan]

In our case, they are not extensions - they are regular assignments. Have you not seen it in those cases?

[SammiPJackson]

what is the submission type on the assignment? 

[EvanDonovan]

It happens on multiple types - Online > File Uploads, Discussions, and New Quizzes, at least. 

Also, it doesn't seem to be consistent whether it is for new students or students that have been around for a while. Some have it and others do not.

[EvanDonovan]

I looked into it further and it has affected all the students who were in the courses in Populi, our SIS, before we added the assignments in Canvas. It's like Canvas is defaulting their scores on these assignments to 0 as we add them.

It is happening on new courses as well as existing courses.