Automatic 0's in gradebook before due date passed

[scunningham1]

I have a teacher who made an assignment that isn't due for another week. It's set to be submitted online as a text entry or a file upload. As soon as she posted the assignment, it automatically entered 0's in the gradebook for every student. 

In her gradebook, she has a late policy set up for missing assignments, but not for late.

I copied the assignment and published it. It is giving - in the gradebook the original still has the 0's assigned.

I have no idea why this is happening. Any insight?

[rmurchshafer]

Just a guess, but by any chance when she originally Published the Assignment was the Due Date incorrect?  It's one of those things that's difficult to troubleshoot because as an admin you can't easily see when and what edits were made, but based on your testing of a copy of the assignment NOT behaving that way, I suspect the 0s may have gotten posted before some edit such as changing the due date was done.

Rick 

[James · Accepted solution]

 @scunningham1  

I duplicated an assignment that had a past due date and this happened to me earlier this semester. I had to go into the gradebook and use the set default grade option for that assignment to set them to unsubmitted. Be sure to override existing grades when you do that.

I filed a ticket with Canvas support and they were glad I figured out how to fix it, but didn't seem to go the extra step to think that changing the due date should reset the zeros that were assigned because it was missing but is no longer missing.

[agrimstad]

Thanks for this!

I have the same problem. (from an assignment I imported, and clearly must have published it before I reset the due dates)

I have set the Default grade to blank now too.

Just to confirm, though, this is an exam. Will Canvas still grade it and give me the option to give them actual grades once they take it?

thanks!

[dubliners099]

I thought this was a solution, but couldn't find out WHERE exactly to set the default. I ended up going into the grade column itself and pulling down to the "Set Default Grade."

I am concerned that later, if a student does not do the assignment that Canvas will NOT give them a zero. This means I'll have to babysit Canvas for those assignments. (And this happened with 4 assignments in one class and 3 assignments in another. As I'm teaching 6 classes, I guarantee you that I will never remember to go through and recheck this.)

[JulieBennett]

I tried going into the gradebook, but that did not help me.  I ended up copying the test bank and deleting the exam I had copied.  then I recreated a new exam and used the test bank I had copied.  It worked.

[WhiteElephant]

Thanks for this amazing time saving tip.  Canvas Support just told me via chat that I'd have to manually delete each zero. 

Just to add details to your post, in case it isn't clear for others, as it wasn't for me, when you select the "set default" grade option from the top, you want to put a -  (the dash key) in the box before checking to override existing grades.  

Again, thanks for the awesome tip.

[andrewsa]

This also happened to me on an assignment in a course copy. The deadline listed in the new course had not passed, but for some reason all the scores in a single assignment defaulted to zero. I think it was reading the original date from the earlier course offering before I updated the deadline in the new course. I used the advice listed above - go into Grades and set the default grade option for that assignment to blank. That seemed to fix it. Not sure why it only affected one of the assignments for the semester, but thanks for the instructions on how to fix it!

[dubliners099]

I'm glad folks have found a workaround, but this "solution" means that we have to babysit those assignments and manually go in and put in a zero later if a student does not do the assignment. 

[dubliners099]

I also wanted to show faculty the settings I currently have on my settings button for grades. Like I said, going in to each assignment, clicking on the three dots, pulling down to "Set Default Grade" and changing that from "0" to blank is a workaround, but it leaves us having to go back after each of those assignments are due and manually entering in a zero for any student who does not do the work. Otherwise, Canvas "skips" that assignment and grades the rest which could result in an much higher (undeserved) grade. 

[dubliners099]

My tech people say to avoid this issue that

1) BEFORE I import course content, I should go to the original courses, click on the gradebook, click on the settings icon (looks like a gear), and then unclick the  "Automatically apply grade for missing submissions" area.

2) Then, go to my new course, import everything, then go to the gradebook on the NEW course, click on the settings icon (looks like a gear), and then click ON the "Automatically apply grade for missing submissions" part and then add a zero into the "Grade for missing submissions" area. Then hit submit.

3) At that point, he claims I'm okay to make changes to due dates, etc. and that row of zeros for assignments not done yet should NOT turn up. 

I'm was to try it for my next semester... but instead, I'm going to do step #1 above, import my stuff into my NEW course, change all my due dates FIRST and then in the new course, go back to my settings page on grades, "click ON the "Automatically apply grade for missing submissions" part and then add a zero into the "Grade for missing submissions" area. Then hit submit

Canvas should look into this issue, though. To be honest, it shouldn't be this difficult. And I wasn't the only professor who experienced this on my campus. Others had it happen, too.

[dubliners099]

Again, I forgot to take off the function in settings to put zeros in before copying over courses this semester... so I ended up with 2 classes out of 6 with zeros throughout all the grading columns. This is after spending 4 weeks making adjustments to courses and making changes. Here I was a week before classes starting with zeros flooding the grade columns. Grrrrr. (And, of course, I'm the overachiever who opens up Canvas sites a week early and sends out an announcement.... so then having to take the courses down to fix it was really frustrating.)

I ended up deleting all my assignments, quizzes, etc. and re-importing them from another course and then laboriously going through to make adjustments and change due dates. That was 4 hours of my life gone. That said, my tech person had another solution to offer. Please note that although he says this SHOULD work, he has not tested it yet.

Another solution:

Here is what my tech person told me:

There is a new feature that you could use instead of “automatically apply grade for missing submission.” At the top of the Total column, click the “three dots” options menu. (See first screen shot)

This will bring up a box that lets you submit a grade for all ungraded artifacts. You can do it for all artifacts that are past due up to the current date, or you can do it for all ungraded artifacts. (See second screen shot)

This would let you fill in zeroes for missing work without using the automatic feature that caused you the problem when you did your copy. That feature should only automatically apply zeros for missing work as well… I think, when you do your copy, you would want to make use of the feature that lets you adjust due dates as you do the copy. I believe that would also prevent the situation you describe. But I have not tested it.

[mara_6]

We're seeing an increase of this behavior in our classes this semester. Chiming in with hopes that the root of the cause can be patched. Tough work, thank you to all who work hard on these things for us behind the scenes.

[mmalakooti]

Hello,

This should be a level three issue. When courses are copied into a new semester, even if you change the dates while copying the course it causes issues. It works only if you choose to remove the dates and, after the course copy, put the new dates. So, as long as the assignments are copied without a date, there is no problem, but that defeats the purpose of course copying. 

When thinking about how students and instructors get frustrated and stressed when given zeros for an assignment that is not yet due, it should be a high-priority matter that Instructure should take care of.

[ccaruso1]

This is occurring with some of our teachers in some courses with some quizzes / assignments, and when they imported the course from the previous year, they selected "remove all due dates" - we have an escalated ticket in with Canvas but no actual solution so far. We were told to copy the quiz/assignment and then delete the imported one - what a huge time waster. 

[EHudson1]

@James There is also an increase in this behavior for our teachers (like others posting recently). 

[James]

@EHudson1 

Yes, this has been mentioned here in the community a lot this semester. It's happening to seasoned users who know what to check for and at schools where classes don't get published until everything is set up correctly -- some even use blueprints to send out the information.

On another thread is a response from level 1 support making it out to be the instructor's fault. While it might be the instructor doing something wrong, what we're seeing is that it is happening too much to just be that.

Level 1's explanation of how to fix it (turn off the missing or late penalty before you do the course copy) is also potentially impossible to do. Going into the source course and changing that could affect student grades and if they mean the destination course, it's already turned off by default when a new course is created.

Canvas needs to stop blaming the user, admit they have a problem, and figure out the solution.

[ccaruso1]

Agree 100%. I have gotten on chat support a few  times for teachers, and Canvas level 1 support continues to play the blame game, even though the teachers having issues are, as you say, seasoned teachers who know what to check for and have successfully used Canvas and importing for years. I sat next to one of the teachers and watched the proper import procedure, including removing all due dates, his gradebook setting for late assignments was OFF. Still the zeros populated the gradebook.

[RussellStaples]

This is ridiculous and has been a thorn for quite awhile. I took an assignment from last year, changed the due date to Mon Nov 18th (today is Friday Nov 15th) and in the grade column all have zeros (which lowers their grades of course). I have to have zero's in there in case there is a non-submission however I shouldn't see this until after the due date and I am kinda miffed that the only solution that I can decipher here involves manually changing all the defaults. Someone at Canvas fix this!

[JimForney]

So, I put in a ticket for this as well not having seen this and the explanation from level 1 had very little of the workaround info here. This apparently has been going on for a while, I found one school has a documentation page warning users about this "bug" - yes Instructure I said bug - it is a bug - I'm quite familiar with the term and definition as we moved off of a free open-source LMS platform which had various bugs in order to go to a more stable and better managed system in terms of code testing. I certainly do not fault for this occurring, I've had my share of programming mishaps, the blame comes from not fixing it.  

This is broader feedback....I wonder how many of my colleagues will agree that is wrong (I was going to say something worse than "wrong") to have any article marked solved when it is clearly not solved. One clicks on the go to solution to find some half-baked work-around with additional clients chiming in that it is still occurring. That is not solved.

[RussellStaples]

I finally got an explanation that I think is applicable. Apparently when I imported the course from a previous iteration all of the due dates were passed as well (there may be a way to clear this not sure). Anyway, zeros are assigned and when I publish, change the due dates etc sure nuff zeros appear in the gradebook (even if it not due). However, if I create an assignment from scratch and assign it (just did this as a test) no zeros appear. Hope this helps!

[JimForney]

Hi Russell, 

Everything you just said is correct. Sounds like you are just coming into this issue now as well. I got a similar explanation from support. Sadly, I think it needs escalation, I may have to see if our rep can bring it up to someone's attention. Obviously, when an assignment is imported to a new course - it should be a new assignment for a new semester and dates/policies from a previous course should not be applied. I found several schools warning about the issue on their webpages - this one below has some useful info:

Known Issue in Canvas with Automatic 0s in the Gradebook