API Grade Change Course ID

[thomas_bishop]

I am charged with finding courses with instructors having neglected grades updates during the course and have been looking at the Audit Grade Change API.

The REST API documentation states that Internal Course IDs can be substituted with sis_course_id values and in nearly all tests this works fine. Except when I try to view an Audit Grade Change Event.

https://<canvas>/api/v1/audit/grade_change/courses/35398 works fine.

https://<canvas>/api/v1/audit/grade_change/courses/sis_course_id:50021.202130 says "The specified resource does not exist."

Is this functioning as designed? If so, can it be changed so that this endpoint recognizes the SIS ID like all the others?

Or, perhaps there is a better way to accomplish this.

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[James]

@thomas_bishop 

I confirmed that the SIS ID method doesn't work for that API call.

As far as finding neglected grading, I think you might be approaching it the wrong way. You're trying to detect neglected grading by looking at the grading that has happened. That is, you're trying to detect the absence of a behavior by looking for the presence of it. In theory, that could work, provided that you knew how much was supposed to be done in the first place. But if it's a slow week and there were a lot of auto-graded assignments, then there's not much work for the teacher to do and so not doing much is exactly what was called for.

It might be better to look at the submissions that still need graded. That information is contained in the Submissions API, which does accept the sis_course_id. I would use the List submissions for multiple assignments endpoint, although others can work as well. It will return the submission status so you know whether the student has submitted anything (there may be nothing for the instructor to do if not), the graded status (so you know whether it has been graded, perhaps automatically so there was nothing for the instructor to do), and the dates and times those things happened so you can see if the instructor is staying on top of things.

One thing I've found immensely helpful (but Canvas doesn't always seem to carry over when I copy a course) is the missing policy. I set missing grades to automatically become 0 so that I don't have to remember to go back and put in 0's for all the students who didn't turn in the assignment.

I will also say that the audit queries tend to be slow. The submissions API might make you iterate through all of the grades or all of the students, so there can be a lot of data, but it does allow for filtering by date on submission and graded, so you can get the recent changes. You may also be able to get your query working through GraphQL using the courses with the submissionsConnection and then you can fetch just the information that you need rather than all of the other stuff that goes along with it.

[KristinL]

Hi @thomas_bishop -

After collaborating with an L1 Support Agent, I think it's worthwhile to work with your CSM to build something that will work for you. Custom reporting is possible, and I think that would be a great place to start with this project.

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