Grading and End of Term Notes

 Canvas community, 

I hope your Thanksgiving holiday was relaxing and you found some quality time to spend with your family. We are gearing up for the end of the semester and I know that you have had several questions related to grading and Canvas. I had scheduled a training for today but with no one registered, I thought I would take some time to remind you of a few grading items as the end of term approaches. In addition, another opportunity to get your grading questions answered is 12/2 at 2:00 and 6:00 as well as 12/3 at 1:00. You can attend all of those sessions via Zoom at this location:  https://heartland.zoom.us/my/acatterson. 

I've came up with my top-five best practices and reminders for grading in Canvas. Please review to ensure your gradebooks are accurate and up-to-date. 

Heartland's Top Five Gradebook Reminders 

 

#1 - Verify Your Assignments and Groupings. Any assignment you create in Canvas is a direct alignment to the Canvas gradebook. Even though assignments are hidden on the navigation bar based on the HCC template, what is found under the Assignments tab is what will appear in your gradebook. Take a minute and click on the Assignments tab in your course. Verify that you have proper groups set and the assignments have been placed in those groups, accordingly. If you weight your grades, you can use the options under the Assignments page to weight each grouping or drop the most highest/lowest scores. Here are some tutorials to help you with these things:

• Creating Assignment Groups
• Setting Assignment Group Weights
• Dropping highest/lowest assignments within groups

#2 - Set the order of your Assignments. Once you have cleaned up your Assignments tab, take a look at the order at which your assignments appear. Drag and drop them into the correct groupings and place them in the order that students will complete them in. Doing this will also help with your gradebook organization and order for viewing. You can use this tutorial to help you with organizing your Assignments. 

#3 - Set a Grading Scheme. In your gradebook, you will have a total column that will display the total points or percentages, depending on how you have your gradebook configured. Students then will need to review your Syllabus to determine what letter grade corresponds with the total points or percentage. Instead, you can set a grading scheme in your class so that the total points or percentage will appear beside the letter grade. This feature is turned on in the settings of your course and can be edited to fit your own grading scheme. Use this tutorial for help in configuring your grading scheme.

#4 - Export your grades for your Division Administrative Assistant.  Once your course is completed, you may want to export your course grades to share with your Administrative Assistant. To complete this, you will need to open your Gradebook and select "Export". Here is a quick guide to show you how to use CSV files and what the field names represent. 

#5 - Incompletes or viewing work past the course end date. I have received quite a few emails and phone calls about this topic, so I'd like to share how to give a student an incomplete and view the work of a student past the course end date. First, if you have an incomplete to give, complete the process with IRIS as you normally have done. Then, notify me of the student, class name and the date the student needs continued access for and I will grant the student an extension past our normal time frame. Remember, you have access to all of the students submissions and grades even past the course date. However, you need to enable inactive students and concluded enrollments to view them. In any past course, hover over the student name column and click "Show inactive enrollments", "Show concluded enrollments". This will populate your class with the grades as well as their past submissions. Here is a tutorial for help on viewing inactive students submissions and grades. 

This is a quick guide and not at all comprehensive, but it will help you complete the wrap-up of your Fall 2020 courses. In addition, register for a drop-in session or the training on the 3rd by going to https://teachpoint.heartland.edu. I'd love to help answer any other grading questions you have or need further clarification on. 

Looking forward to sending 2020 out the door, how about you? =) 

Take care and enjoy the end of the semester!

~Anna