Change default grading statuses as an admin

[jhughesWSESD]

We are having an issue  with grades that are marked as excused in Canvas syncing with our LMS as a "0" score.  We have contacted support for both companies, however, there is apparently little we can do to remedy the situation.   The problem is some teachers by default are still setting the "excused" status which unintentionally lowers a student's grade. 

Our thought is that we could remove or make the "Excused" status unavailable for use and replace it with a custom status of "Exempt" (we can set this up as admin) so that teachers could mark the status, students wouldn't get a message saying the assignment is missing and parents could better understand why an assignment isn't completed.

Please let me know if any clarification  is needed.    

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @jhughesWSESD,

I think you're probably already going town the right path for this: working with your SIS vendor and Instructure to get that integration smoothed out. 

I dabble in some "short code, high impact" customizations via CSS and JS, and it's definitely possible to do a lot of things.  This particular one, however, would be complex because not only are there UI elements to change the status to excused (probably easy-ish to hide those), but teachers can type out EX in the gradebook or speedgrader to apply that status as well, and I think that would be much more complex to catch/block.

Hope this helps a bit!

-Chris

[jhughes2]

Thank you for this.  Exactly what I was looking for.  I know changes like these are never that simple and we need to consider all of the impacts of the changes we make.   Thanks for providing another item to consider!