Combining graded assignments into one with different due dates?

[cgray19]

I'm TA'ing a class and I think we set up the Canvas assignments for student presentations incorrectly. All the students do a short presentation once during the quarter and are assigned to a specific day. We created a separate assignment for each presentation day (e.g., "Presentation 2/27"), but unfortunately this means that only about 8 of the 80 students have a grade on this day and everyone else has a missing assignment for the days they don't present. There are four days left of presentations and we've had 6 days of presentations so far. It also just looks like a mess in the gradebook view because there are so many separate assignments for something that's really only one assignment from the student's perspective.

I see two routes forward. Can someone help me decide which makes the most sense/is easiest? Or maybe there's a better way?

1. Create a new assignment called "Presentation", create groups of students according to the days they are assigned to present and then set different due dates for each group, like in this helpful article. I would then need to copy the existing grades for the "Presentation 2/27" assignments to this assignment in the gradebook and later delete the old "Presentation 2/27" type assignments.
2. Mark every student as "Excused" from the assignment on the days they don't present. I'm not entirely sure this works out perfectly in the final grades? Also it doesn't solve the issue of a very messy looking gradebook, but it seems to introduce less risk of messing up everyone's grades.

Either way, I plan to email the class to let them know I'll be changing grades in Canvas so they don't get freaked out by assignments appearing and disappearing.

Suggestions? Thanks in advance.

[kona · Accepted solution]

 @cgray19 , greetings and welcome to the Canvas Community! You have done an excellent job investigating this issue and have arrived at the two possible solutions to your issue!

Good job solving your own problem and yes, you would definitely want to let the students know what's going on before you start messing with things! 🙂

Kona