[Gradebook Settings] A global option to enable/disable Missing and Late Status labels in the New Gradebook

I would like to see a more global option to enable/disable the display of MISSING/LATE assignment labels to our students in their Gradebook. While I appreciate the effort to address our initial concerns about this feature in the New Gradebook, as it is now this option must be managed student-by-student for EACH assignment. The display of these labels as the default is problematic for those of us who allow students to choose among a number of assignments to complete within an assignment group (e.g. making those ‘not done’ assignments neither ‘late’ nor ‘missing’).  

An Example...An instructor with 4 classes in a 16 week semester, with 50 students in each class, allows students to choose 5/10 assignments to complete in a given assignment group. The instructor cannot know which of these assignments students will choose until all of the assignment deadlines in that assignment group have passed. As such, to prevent students from seeing inaccurate late/missing labels in the New Gradebook for assignments that were not actually required, the instructor must:

1) go to the Gradebook column for each assignment in that assignment group (10 assignments)
2) click on the cell where each student’s grade would appear for that assignment (200 students)
3) change the Grade Detail Tray to ‘No Status’ (= 2000 grade detail tray changes)

If you then consider instructors with larger classes, and/or those who allow assignment choices in more than one assignment group, I think the need for a more global option associated with this feature becomes clear. 

 

For a more detailed explanation of how the option the removal of these labels is currently managed in the New Gradebook, please see ttps://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-13333-canvas-release-new-gradebook#jive_content_id_Grades_Ma... . 

 

Additional concerns associated with this issue can be found in my post at https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/9339-missing-label-placed-incorrectlysubmission-on-paper-and-o... (Feb. 25th, 2018). 

64 Comments
dianner
Community Member

This is critical in the age of Covid with Simultaneous Remote students engaging at home in the exact same class as on campus students. An upload link is required for Sim students but if the students bring work to class (as preferred by the teacher) then the automatic LATE AND MISSING tags are applied for those students. This becomes a huge place confusion and discouragement for students, parents, and staff.  It's completely unnecessary if we just had a global DISABLE option!!

 

pleeeeease!

aanthony
Community Participant

My district just starting using Kami integrated with Canvas. The late status has become problematic for our math teachers, who have a due date for the assignment so the students know when they are expected to have done the work, and then they go over the assignment as a class and expect students to make corrections.  In order to edit their work with Kami, the students must unsubmit their assignments to make changes and then re-submit.  This process results in students' assignments being inaccurately marked late.  This is also a problem when teachers sync their grades to PowerSchool.  Canvas is telling the PowerTeacher gradebook to mark those assignments as late for the students, so the teachers have to take extra steps to login to PowerTeacher and take away the late status there.  It would be great to have the control to choose whether you want the late status to be automatic or manual in the gradebook.  

ariana_stafford
Community Member
 
MrWilliams
Community Explorer

Hi All,

So my request is a feature option to turn off the automatic application of late labels to assignments.  While the intention of auto-labeling is for the efficiency of the teacher, in our K12 setting the auto labeling (and the eventual notifications that students receive) is causing a bit of havoc for many of our teachers -- especially mid-COVID while all deadlines are a little wonky.  

Being able to turn this feature off would give us a little more autonomy over our gradebooks (as well as how they interact with our SIS) and would be super helpful for us!

Thanks for considering!

-- Oops!  I just started my own topic with the very same ask and looks like I got nested under here.  Thanks for raising this up.  This would really be huge, huge, huge!  It is a constant stressor on our campus for both teachers and students.

merily
Community Member

There is no feature to automatically mark as "missing" with external tools as well.

 

I am having the issue that I have to go into the Grades tab and manually mark assignments as "missing" for any assignment that uses an external tool. While I understand that not all external tools can show whether or not submissions are missing right away, I think this would be a hugely beneficial feature to be able to enable for at least some of them. For example, my Google Docs Cloud Assignments automatically say "no submission" when a student has not submitted. Why can't I have those be set to "missing" automatically? This would save me hours of time. It's important for me to mark assignments as missing because then it comes up with MISSING in big red letters on a student's grade page, which makes them more likely to know what they should make up and prevents them from shutting down when seeing a low grade. It also enables me to highlight certain missing assignments that have high value, etc. 

 

I also think this "missing" issue could be somewhat solved if there was a command for "missing" to use in the SpeedGrader. In SpeedGrader, I can type in "EX" to have an assignment marked as "excused," but why is there nothing I can type in to have an assignment marked as "missing?"

 

On another front, a similar issue applies to the automatic "late" marking. Once they are automatically marked as "late," I must go into the grades tab and manually change them to "none" if I don't want them marked as late." I like doing this after I grade a late assignment, because then I can easily "sort by late" to see newly submitted assignments.

 

Ending idea - I think it would be beneficial to have some quicker way to mark/unmark assingnments as "missing" or "late" when grading (either Grades tab or SpeedGrader) that does not require me to click on each grade, click the little arrow, and change the selection.

 

Thanks for allowing this forum to exist.

SG1974
Community Member

I see that this has still not been adjusted.  I have students who have transferred in from another class, other students who have turned in paper assignments, and some who were just late.  In all cases, the red "Missing assignment" tag is still there.  

JoeBattistelli
Community Explorer

Yes please!

KarlOswald
Community Explorer

I use an external app with embedded html code into Discussion Boards. I don't expect it to link with gradebook but I would very much like the option to delete the 'missing' indicator. It is very confusing to students.

mnickels
Community Member

I would like to see this as well. I use a couple different LTI software's and you grade them assignment outside of Canvas so even the student do submit them before the due date but since they are not graded until after the due date and then transferred into Canvas they all show as late. The only remedy is to individually change the status of each student. which is way too time consuming.

Nancy_Webb_CCSF
Community Champion

Yes global disable of Late and/or Missing labels is really necessary.  And perhaps the ability to disable it per assignment too, for those who do like the labels.  Changing it for every student submission is just too much work, especially in large classes.  @mnickels agree it's necessary for those external assignments that all appear late when they were not.