Allow 'Treat ungraded as 0' in New Gradebook

[jeremy_stevens]

It would be very useful to be able to use the 'Treat ungraded as 0' feature of the current Gradebook in the New Gradebook, especially once the New Gradebook becomes the default in January 2020. I understand that not having this option seems to be by design, however there are use cases relevant to our tertiary institution that I would like to outline to see if they gather support among the Canvas Community. Please feel free to add your own use cases in the comments if this is relevant to you as well.

Our teaching staff use the Total column in the Gradebook to view how well a student is doing overall in their unit attempt. Not having the 'Treat ungraded as 0' feature in the future will mean that:

1. At the start of a teaching period – if say, 2/5 assignments have been completed by students and graded – the Total column will display a grade that is the scaled-up version of where they are sitting, working on the assumption that the other assignments are to be ignored. It would be possible for someone to achieve 100% in both completed assessments, and the Total column would then display a score of 100%. This is not an accurate reflection of where the student is at in terms of their overall completion of the unit and means the instructor has to do manual work, or ensure they set up assignment groups in particular ways, to try and figure out an accurate representation of student progress.

2. At the end of a teaching period – once all assignments have been completed by students and graded – the Total column will display a scaled-up grade for any students who have not completed any assignments or are missing grades. For these students, in reality, their non-submission is equivalent to a score of 0 – however in the New Gradebook, the Total column will not reflect this. This makes it difficult for instructors to review their cohort's progress and standing once the teaching period is complete, before those grades are to be formally sent to the SIS for release.

The only suggestion I've seen so far to mitigate against these issues is to use a Missing Submission policy.

How do I apply a Missing Submission policy in the New Gradebook?‌

This is not an adequate solution in our case.

In the case of example 1 above: at early stages of semester, students won't actually have 'missing' submissions – those submissions will be due in the future. A Missing Submissions policy would not apply.

In the case of example 2 above: Missing Submission policies do not apply to No Submission or On Paper assignments, LTI assignments, or assignments that do not have due dates set. We also cannot force Missing Submission policies at the account level, or via API when each individual Canvas course is created, to ensure consistency across our institution for such a crucial display issue. This would mean that even if it were an acceptable solution in other regards (and as per example 1, it isn't quite there in this case), we would be asking all of our institution's instructors to apply the same Missing Submission policy, and ensure that the exceptions to the policy as above also had 0 grades implemented where students had not submitted work. Not only is there scope for error here across large institutions such as ours, but this seems a disproportionate amount of effort to ask instructors to go to simply so that they can see an accurate reflection of their student's total grades for the overall unit.

This is a crucial issue for us, as we need instructors to be able to see how their students are doing throughout, and at the end of semester – this information informs moderation, future assessment design, learning outcomes, and reporting to faculty.

Others have suggested that the Missing Submission policy feature be amended (https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/13954-apply-missing-submission-policy-to-all-assignment-types?...‌), and while I agree that it could use further flexibility, in our above case it would not quite solve our problems. It would be a simpler solution to allow the new Gradebook to set 'Treat ungraded as 0' to on or off instead. I understand that the Gradebook CSV Export is still calculating the Unposted Final Grade anyway – so the 'Treat ungraded as 0' score is still there in the system, just not being displayed at the UI level.

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2021-02-20) - Canvas Community 

[rosemary_odonne]

Thanks for your reply Steven, the work-around is what I planned to do for this year.

However a new issue I've encountered is that the notification that Canvas sends to students when I apply a default grade to a quiz says "Your assignment has been graded", which actually confuses students a lot because they think they have failed to submit something. Is there anyway that the notification that a default grade has been applied could say "A default grade has been applied to this quiz" which is far more neutral and accurate than the current message that students receive: 

I will also check out your other suggestion about self-paced courses. 

[Steven_S]

I'm not aware of way to turn off that notification.  Before I enter early zeros, I use the message all students who have not been graded feature to send a message out explaining that the zeros are required to make the gradebook calculate correctly and that they will be replace by actual grades for work the students submit.  I also mention that they may receive notifications about these zeros that they may ignore, and then I include a note about the zeros in the assignment instructions, as well.  It's not perfect but it helps.  (This is only an issue for me on extra credit assignments.)

[jeremy_stevens]

Hi Steven, I think one of the issues with this approach for us is that for our grading schemas, a 0 is different to a non-attempt (i.e., a blank cell in the Gradebook). 0 to us implies the student attempted the assessment or quiz and simply did not gain any points. A non-attempt is when they do not attempt or submit at all.

This is important data for us to have historically, as students have different fail-type grades for their courses depending on the manner in which they failed (for example: attempted everything but did not achieve a pass grade, vs did not attempt any assessments at all). These different fail grades tell us a great deal about what kind of support a particular student or cohort might be requiring to succeed.

Ideally Canvas' implemented solution to this would involve allowing institution admins (at the account level) and instructors (at the course level, if they wish to override) to set what the default state for 'Treat ungraded as 0' is for both staff and students, for consistency across an institution.

This would account for differences between institutional practices, and for those that want 'Treat ungraded as 0' as the default, it would be much more efficient and user-friendly than having to set a default grade for each assignment (the user wouldn't have to do anything at all, if we can set it at the account level).

[Steven_S]

I think treat ungraded as zero is a problem, because students do not see an accurate grade unless zeros are entered for for assignments they have not submitted.  However the new gradebook has color-coded the statuses of late, missing, resubmitted, dropped and excused. The missing label could offer you a solution if there was a way to apply it to all remaining assignments.  The late policy will do this automatically, but those without due dates, or with in-class assignments, still need a quick way to apply the missing label. 

Instead of treat ungraded as zero, an option to simultaneously set the default grade and also mark the the assignment as missing would allow us to enter zeros that are clearly different from "earned" zeros in the gradebook. I think that simple change would solve this for most instructors, and others would still want a one time version of the same for the entire gradebook.

[martha_phelps]

Wanted to add that I came here looking for a way to enable this feature. Add my voice to the crowd asking for it back. 

[jhaynes-hughes]

You can set the default grade for an assignment to 0 after you have graded all the submissions.  However, you have to do this for EACH assignment, rather than all assignments. At least, as far as I've seen.  Correct me someone if I'm wrong about this!

[kkaeser]

What is we could have a setting that would automatically mark a score that is a zero as a missing submission. Teachers that use the set default grade feature to bulk add zeros to an assignment? 

[Stef_retired]

Comments from Instructure

The Gradebook View menu includes the View Ungraded as 0 option, which is a visual change only and does not affect any grades. This change aligns parity with the Individual View Gradebook and provides instructors with a visual change in identifying grading calculations for ungraded assignments.

For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2021-02-20) - Canvas Community