The overall grade shown is Canvas is the so-called “Current Grade”.

This is the weighted average of the graded assignments, but it ignores past-due assignments, so the students have an overly optimistic estimate of their true score. Canvas also computes a “Final Grade”, which counts all the missing assignments as 0, but this score only shows up when the gradebook is exported. The students need to be able to see both overall grades.

I use McGraw-Hill’s Connect homework software, so the students submit most assignments there, not thru Canvas. When these are past-due, Canvas should score them as zeroes, but it doesn’t; instead it simply leaves a dash, which doesn’t lower there displayed score. This is unfair to students. I had students who thought they had C’s in the class based on the displayed overall score (in spite of missing many assignments). But their real overall scores were zeroes.

So, to be fair to the students, Canvas should show both the overall score based on all the assignment due up to that date as well as the overall score based just on the graded assignments.