formative and summative

[jlkyork]

Per our district, we have to have formative and summative assessments only. Nothing else. I have the SIS check marked to sync from Canvas to Infinite Campus, but I do not see anywhere to tell Canvas if the grade is to go to the formative side of my gradebook or the summative. How and where do I do this? A sync that can't separate the two is kinda useless.

[Chris_Hofer]

Good morning, @jlkyork ...

To my knowledge, there is nothing in the UI of Canvas where you can specify if a particular assessment is either "formative" or "summative".

If you wanted, you could suggest this as a Feature Idea here in the Community:

• How do idea conversations work in the Instructure Community?
• What is the feature development process for Instructure products?
• How do I create a new idea conversation in the Instructure Community?

Sorry I don't have better news for you, but I hope this helps to answer your question.

[bbennett2]

Without more detail on what it actually looks like, I'm going to make some suggestions based on assumptions.

Are "formative" and "summative" categories in your Infinite Campus gradebook? I don't use IC, but you can set up grading categories in Canvas that will then sync to whichever categories you want in your other gradebook.

In general terms, formative work shouldn't count in the student gradebook. You can approach this two ways:

1. Set up weighted gradebook categories with formative at 0% overall course weight and summative 100% overall.
2. Exempt formative assignments from the final score (assignment by assignment).

Method 1

In Assignments, click on + Group to create a new assignment group and title it either Formative or Summative. Then, click on the three-dot menu in the top right and select Assignment Groups Weight. This will allow you to set percentage weights for each category respectively. Then, follow your district's guides for how to set up a sync to IC.

Method 2

Create whatever gradebook structure you want but make sure to remove your formative assignments from the final calculated score.

This way, all of your assignments can still go into the book but only the summative tasks, regardless of scoring category, will count for that final grade.

Again, this is working off of several assumptions, but it might get you closer to what you're trying to do without having to wait for a feature option to be selected and implemented.

[Code-with-Ski · Accepted solution]

@jlkyork 

If you have Formative and Summative grade categories in Infinite Campus, then you will need to create assignment groups for Formative and Summative in Canvas.  Based on the Canvas documentation, the assignment group names must match the category names in Infinite Campus exactly for the sync to work properly.

How do I properly name my Canvas assignment groups for Infinite Campus grade passback? 

[LoriCheeney]

So then, how do my students see the different grade categories in Canvas? 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello @LoriCheeney ...

If you have assignment groups set up on your "Assignments" page within Canvas (for example: "Formative" and "Summative"), then there are a couple places those will show up for students on their "Grades" page.  The first place is on the right side of their screen in a sort-of table format.  You can see an example of what this might look like by checking out the "View Sidebar" section of this Guide (about half-way down the screen): How do I view my grades in a current course?.  The next area that students would see these assignment group names would be near the bottom of the "Grades" page ... just above the "Total" row in bold lettering.  You can see an example of this under the sections "View Percentage Grade Calculation" and "View Points Grade Calculation" further down in this same Guide I've linked to.

I hope this will be of some help to you.  Sing out if you have any questions about this...thanks!