Why do grading periods have to lock?

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joseph_allen
Community Champion

So my institution - 55k students, 8k teachers, and 136k parents have just started using Grading Periods.  So far so good until we just moved from one grading period to another.  We learned the hard way that the grade book for the concluding grading period locks.  Why is this?  In K12, teachers need a few days between the end of the grading period to when report cards come out to add assignments, make modifications, etc.  To have them lock really doesn't make sense.  So if I leave the grading period open, then the assignment for the next grading period are not aligned correctly.  When this was first discovered, we had hundreds of emails from angry teachers as to why they could not edit grades in their grade book.   There is also the case of students with special needs, or for other reasons need grades to be entered well after the close.  We have found that speedgrader is a work around, but that is really too complicated to explain to 8k teachers.  Canvas, please remove the grading period locks as they really don't make much sense, especially in K12.  Thanks.

Other related issues with grading periods that need to be fixed:

  • The Export report in the Gradebook needs a filter by grading period so teachers can get that information
  • The grade summary page that a student or parent observer see need to show the current grading period, not the full year average as that is misleading.
  • The Canvas APP needs to have a grading period filter.  Currently it shows the year long average which is not helpful to students and parents who are only interested in quarter grades, so teachers have to explain that people shouldn't look at the app for grades
  • Many of the reports need a grading period filter along with the term filter.
1 Solution
ckelson
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hi  @joseph_allen ​,

I understand your frustration with the locking grading periods. There is a work around for this, if the teacher goes into their course settings, grading schemes and then grading periods, and edits for example the start of the grading period which defaults to 12:00am and changes it to 12:01am they now have edited the grading periods so it is theirs and they can edit grades in that grading period for as long as they need. I know this doesn't address your question as to why it locks in the first place, there are reasons that relate to schools who do want that feature for when their grades post to SIS and they want it to be locked, however, you can vote for this feature (Allow admins to control when grades lock in concluded grading periods) if you haven't already and follow it for any updates from product.

Regarding your other topics, many of them are in development and you should be able to expect soon:

  • The Export report in the Gradebook needs a filter by grading period so teachers can get that information (this is currently in development and could be released in the next release for 11/21/15)
  • The grade summary page that a student or parent observer see need to show the current grading period, not the full year average as that is misleading. (this has been developed and was released this past weekend to Beta, we are expecting to have it pushed to Production on 11/21/15 release)
  • The Canvas APP needs to have a grading period filter.  Currently it shows the year long average which is not helpful to students and parents who are only interested in quarter grades, so teachers have to explain that people shouldn't look at the app for grades. (This is something we will need to add to the roadmap for mobile as it usually is a little behind in development from Canvas desktop version, however, I'll be sure to bring this up with Product as well).
  • Many of the reports need a grading period filter along with the term filter. (Specifics could be helpful and this would be something our Product team will need to look deeper into and see how we can ensure reports can accurately pull MGP data)

I know this doesn't answer all of your questions, however, I hope this helps and provides some insight into what we are currently doing to resolve these concerns. Thanks for you patience and feedback.

Clint Kelson

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