Why the Delay in Releasing the New Grade Book?

[deborah_okey]

This new grade book is going to be more complicated to work with. Why are you not releasing it BEFORE the beginning of the semester so profs can learn how to use it BEFORE students have access to it? Surely a company that works exclusively with academics is aware that most college courses begin the Tuesday after MLK day, which is Jan. 20. Do you think profs wait until the day classes begin to set up our courses? I already have two of my online courses set up for spring 2020, and most of the profs I know at least have their courses set up by early January. Since the videos indicate this new grade book program is complete, why isn't it being released in late December to give us time to learn to work with it BEFORE we need to answer student questions? The release date of Jan. 20 seems to be very inconsiderate, problematic planning.

[Chris_Hofer]

Good morning,  @deborah_okey ...

While I cannot speak for Instructure (I'm at a Technical College in Wisconsin), your local Canvas administrator does have the option to currently either set the New Gradebook to "Allow" or "On".  If this option is set to "Allow", then every instructor at your school can choose to turn on the New Gradebook per course.  If the option is set to "On", then the New Gradebook would be enabled for all courses at your school.  Even though Instruture has set a date for the New Gradebook, I would recommend that you reach out to your local Canvas administrator(s) to see what their plans are for switching over to the New Gradebook.

For reference, here is the admin Guide: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-12590-what-feature-options-are-currently-available-for-an-e... (though the option shown for "Off" seems to be disabled on my screen).

I hope this helps, Deborah.

[myerdon01]

As Canvas admin at our institution, I have let faculty know this is coming and that I am going to turn it on once final grades for fall term have been submitted. I also held informational sessions last week to show them what it will look like, AND gave them the option to turn it on in their spring 2020 courses now (or in a development shell) so they can give it a try. 

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

 @deborah_okey ‌, please refer to the discussion about transition timing that started over a year ago: https://community.canvaslms.com/message/122916-new-gradebook-tentative-q3-2019-transition-date-feedb... . In addition to this public discussion, our teams held extensive direct conversations with schools and universities all around the world to determine the best transition date.