Grades tab - should NOT show all assignments without due date (PLEASE!!!!)

[JacquelineWiley]

A recent update has caused the Grades tab to show ALL assignments (even those without a due date) making it VERY cumbersome and confusing to find only the assignments and quizzes that are solely for that quarter and that have a due date. 

My colleagues and I make approximately 6-8 assignments per course we teach EACH DAY so the grades tab is now overwhelmed with all of these assignments. A large majority of these are ungraded practice exercises that I do not want to contain a due date as that then causes the students' list of assignments to be overwhelming rather than be an easy way for them to see what graded / high priority assignments they have to complete or have missed. 

The fact that this update was made after we have been using Canvas since September and not putting due dates and therefore not seeing all these assignments in Grades makes it all the more frustrating. I have MANY assignments from Sept and on that are showing up in my grades tab for 4th quarter. 

Clearly, as I have described the high volume of assignments without due dates, it is not practical for us to go in and add due dates to the assignments now. 

PLEASE, PLEASE, change the Grades set up so that it does NOT include assignments without due dates. Or allow for a 'hide assignments without due date' option. 

[GabriellaAbrams]

I have having the same problem!! I now have over 50 assignments flooded onto my gradebook making it nearly impossible to find any assignments. 

[RussellAinbinde]

This is important if it is overloaded how do we keep track of student progress.

We are a secondary school and we are held accountable to keep people updated on this issue. 

[Stef_retired]

@JacquelineWiley @RussellAinbinde @GabriellaAbrams 

We're not aware of any very recent changes Canvas has made to multiple grading period functionality (as described in How do I use grading periods in a course?). As all three of you are from the same school district, I suspect that there was a change made locally that is affecting your gradebook view.

Have you asked your local Canvas admin about what might have changed at your school?

[MattHanes]

We had a similar issue, but it was not due to a change in Canvas. The default behavior is that undated assignments show in the last grading period. So if your grading period recently changed to the last grading period of the year, that may be what is making the grades page look a bit different compared to the previous grading periods. 

[JasmineOstrom]

I am in support of making this change!! 

[Stef_retired]

@MattHanes Thanks for explaining this! Are you recommending to your teachers that they filter by grading period to manage this? ( How do I filter columns and rows in the Gradebook? 

[JacquelineWiley]

@Stef_retired 

I realize now it is not due to an update but rather that since all these assignments were without due dates they, by default, are pushed to Q4. This is the reason why we are only seeing it now.

There should be a way to eliminate 'non due date' assignments from the Grades tab for the quarter. 

If you are a teacher who uses Canvas to its utmost potential and creates many activities for practice and checking for understanding, you are essentially affected more negatively by this default setting. 

[MariaMellace]

I agree! It is extremely difficult to navigate the grades tab in quarter 4 with all assignments defaulting here.  Often times I assign work as an in-class activity which I don't want to show in the gradebook or use as part of a student's average.  Please make this change Canvas! 

[MattHanes]

@Stef_retired Unfortunately, filtering by Grading Period still makes the undated assignments appear in whatever the last grading period is. My plan for next year is to create a grading period called "Undated" and make it the last one chronologically. I wanted to try to do that this year, but it only changes the grading period if you add a due date and then remove it again if the assignment already exists.

[Stef_retired]

@JacquelineWiley 

Thanks to the assistance of @MattHanes we've gotten to the root cause of the issue. Here are some next steps:

(1) Contact your district admin and ask them if they can put into place the remedy Matt described above.

(2) Add your support to the existing idea that would exclude assignments marked "Do not count towards the final grade" from the Gradebook: Hide non-graded assignments from the Grades page

Separately, this part of your description stands out to me, because truly ungraded assignments do not appear in the Canvas gradebook—"A large majority of these are ungraded practice exercises that I do not want to contain a due date"—so you might want to look into how these were created and why ungraded exercises are populating the gradebook.

We'll archive this idea in light of the conversation already underway to which I linked above. This discussion is not locked, so people can continue to comment.

Thanks!

[CV20]

This makes the Grades tab overcrowded with assignments that teachers do not want incorporated into the quarter grade. 

[RobertDiRe]

Yes this is a big problem and completely clutters the gradebook.  Are we expected to go back and assign due dates to every single assignment we posted on Canvas?  This is a bad default and should be changed so that teachers don't have to jump through even more hoops this year.

[JacquelineWiley]

@Stef_retired 

I don’t think this issue is solved and shouldn’t be archived. 

Your response re: not graded work is a bit confusing to me. When I say ungraded, I mean I did not assign a grade as I do not want it to be a part of their grades. As stated, it is an activity for practice, a warm-up etc. With remote learning having transformed the way we provide instruction and materials, I imagine you know that not every assignment is meant to be graded. In the link that provided, another teacher expressed a similar thought.  

Many of use are creating 3-4 “assignments” a day for a lesson.  This adds up to hundreds of assignments  This is not a small thing to see all of these (starting from Q1) in the grades tab and to have to navigate the gradebook as such. 

Please read some of the comments here. Assignments that do not have a due date and/or are intentionally not graded should not have to show up in the Grades both for teacher and students (they too are overwhelmed!). 

Can Canvas please address this issue? 

[Stef_retired]

@JacquelineWiley  

As pointed out by the admin for a different school, this can be managed at the account level by your Canvas admin by creating a separate grading period for assignments without due dates. Have you had a chance to discuss this solution with your local admin?

Also, Canvas assignment settings offer a "Not Graded" option; assignments that are set as "Not Graded" do not display in the Gradebook. Typically that would be the grading type teachers use when they don't wish to assign a grade to an activity. 

We recognize your frustration at having just started out with Canvas and that you're only now discovered this, most likely because a new quarter has just begun at your organization. All of the comments and ratings on this idea have come from your school, so we're going to ask your school's Customer Success Team to work with your local admin to help resolve this.

Thanks for your patience.

[MattHanes]

@Stef_retired 

While adding an extra grading period will help in the future, it doesn't really help in the current case because the assignments still show in the whatever the last grading period existed when the assignment was created with no due date. You still have to update each assignment with a date or add a date and then remove it to get it to change to the new grading period. At least that's how it seemed to work in my testing. That's why we are implementing the change next year because it doesn't do much good this year. I would definitely vote for an idea to remove undated assignments from showing in the last grading period. 

[Stef_retired]

@MattHanes 

Since we've now had a fairly extensive conversation that has allowed us to get to the heart of the matter, the idea as originally written doesn't fully reflect the origin of the problem or the intent of the suggestion. Would you be willing to write a new idea that specifically requests something on the order of "remove undated assignments from showing in the last grading period"? That would allow new people coming to the idea to get the whole story without having to read through the entire thread.

If you would be willing to do that, we can then provide the link to the new idea here. Thanks in advance!

[MattHanes]

@Stef_retired , how does this look?
https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Don-t-show-undated-assignments-in-the-last-gra... 

[Stef_retired]

@MattHanes 

It's perfect, Matt, and I just opened it for further conversation.

@JacquelineWiley @RobertDiRe @CV20 @MariaMellace  and to everyone else who has rated/commented on this idea, please add your support to the idea Matt just created:

Don't show undated assignments in the last grading... 

And the Customer Success Team for Manhasset Union will still reach out to your admin to help come up with an interim solution that might alleviate the near-term pain.

Thanks, everyone!