Support Grading History in large course sites

[stevenwilliams]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea open for vote Wed. January 6, 2016 - Wed. April 6, 2016  Learn more about voting...

Currently, Grading History (How do I use grading history in the Gradebook? ) is completely unavailable in course sites over a certain size (around 100 students, in my observations). However, these large sites, generally with multiple teaching assistants and graders, are the ones that would benefit most from a log of who entered any specific grade.

At my university, we offer a very large number of courses that exceed the current capacity of the Grading History feature. Canvas adding support for this functionality in large courses would provide significantly increased transparency and accountability for our grading process and for instructors of large courses.

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-13179-canvas-production-release-notes-2017-10-28 

[cwruck]

Hey Folks,

We're working on scoping the back end work to make more data points available, but I'm also curious how we could improve the front end for you... What questions do you have about grade history that we're currently not answering with this page?

[stevenwilliams]

Deactivated user​, thanks for reaching out! Short-term, it would be excellent to see Grading History updated to display at least the most recent 2000 grade changes in courses of all sizes. Canvas' own documentation (How do I use grading history in the Gradebook? ) still does not acknowledge the current behavior of Grading History shutting itself off in large courses. These courses usually have multiple TAs and graders modifying data, and need a robust logging of grade changes more than small classes which may have just one or two individuals modifying grades. Longer-term, it's great to hear that your team is working on making more than 2000 data points available.

[RobDitto]

There was a good question mentioned in a previous version of this idea, : clarifying the order of multiple grade changes on the same day. Thankfully the API has that information; that's what I use currently when called upon to investigate a grade-change question.

[derek_dodson]

The grade history should also be available when looking at individual students, not necessarily the entire class.  Whenever I need a grade history, I need it in relation to an individual student.

[cms_hickss]

This is important for my school as well. Especially with large courses or courses with many assignments and many TAs.

It would be nice if the grade history could be viewed multiple ways.

• By individual student
• By quiz/assignment/etc
• By quiz/assignment/etc and then individual student
• By grader (when there are multiple TAs and/or Teachers)

I'll throw this out there. Sometimes it's about accidentally having changed the wrong grades or trying to track what changes you made for an individual student or quiz. Other times it could be about tracking the actions of a naughty TA.

[fosterl]

While it will be great to see a display of more than 2000 grade changes (or any in large courses), it would also be useful to be able to download a csv file containing these. I use the Admin Tools -> Logging -> Grade Change Activity when I need large course grade history data, but you get such a long list of data points it is very hard to search for which ones you need. So for the Grading History, when the results are numerous, having the ability to download it would be super helpful.

[kdscholl]

Deactivated user​ we have faculty that have classes with over 200 students and 30-40 TAs. Trying to go through the grading history with all of those players can be very difficult. They would love the functionality of the grade history that the admin tools allow How do I view grade change activity for an account? Of course... just within their course and not through the admin tools. But to be able to search and filter by grader, by student, by assignment, and then add a second layer of filtering if necessary. Thanks!

[curtain]

Yes, showing more history but filtering it and applying the filtering by default to limit the initial scope seem like a very reasonable way to handle this data.  Like  @kdscholl ​ indicated, we have lots of classes with multiple TAs and 200-500 students.  Default filtering and granularity would be great!

[fosterl]

Kelly, please keep in mind that the Admin Tool for Grade Change Activity Logging can only be filtered on ONE of the options (Grader, Student, Course ID, Assignment ID, or dates). I submitted a feature idea to allow us to have more than one filter; for me, filtering on just one, like Assignment ID, still resulted in so many lines to scroll though that it was unusable. And you can't download it to use other tools to search. Unfortunately, this feature idea didn't get enough votes to move forward. I like the idea of Instructors having access to a report like this, but it does have limited usefulness for large courses like the one you mention.

[kdscholl]

I agree with everything you are mentioning here Lindy; thank you for clarifying! My only point in including the example of the admin tool is that Christi had asked what we would like on the front end. What our faculty would like is a tool that LOOKS similar to the admin tool with multiple options for filtering.. but yes, like you said also multi-layered filtering as well.

As far as votes, it's at 291 up votes and is in the stage 3.5 - under consideration. To me that says there's still a chance???