Gradebook setting View Options will not stick

[JEFFREYCRISWELL]

3 questions,  all dealing with how canvas arranges assignments in the gradebook. 

1) In Canvas Gradebook Settings, under View Options, I have Arrange By set to Due Date - Newest to Oldest.  However it won't stick and I frequently find it set back to Default Order and have to change it back to Newest to Oldest.  Why?

2) I like to assign a 2nd and/or 3rd version of a test only to those who need to take it.  I have been told that if I assign an assignment to a handful of students instead of to the default Everyone or to one of the student Groups that have been created, it will cause problems.  Is this correct?  What kind of problems does it cause?

3) I have noticed that if I assign an assignment to one of the Groups in my canvas course (Gen Ed, SPED Accommodated, SPED Modified) instead of the default Everyone, these assignments are moved to the front left of my gradebook and when subsequent assignments are published, the ones assigned to specific Groups are out of order in the gradebook.  Why?

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @JEFFREYCRISWELL,

For #2, I don't think there are any huge overarching issues with assigning to specific students instead of everyone in Canvas, but if your school/institution has grades passing back from Canvas to your student information system, there could be issues in that process.  I'd definitely suggest reaching out to someone at your school/institution (probably in the IT area) to ask about the specifics that apply to you.

For #1, I have seen a few other people say their gradebook view settings don't stick either here in the community.  Unfortunately, it's not something I have been able to reproduce on my own, so my guess is that a browser (or browser extension) is inadvertently blocking some of the data flow from your device back to Canvas.  I'd suggest allowing your Canvas domains through any ad blockers you may be running, and allowing 3rd party cookies (but that shouldn't be an issue for the gradebook).  Aside from that, if you could try a different browser to see if the issue persists there, that may be helpful to narrow down the cause of the issue.

For #3, I think the gradebook sorting does look at the "everyone" settings when you're sorting by due dates.  That's because each specific section/student could have their own dates that are in a totally different order, so Canvas needs to pick something as the baseline.  In the case where "everyone" isn't assigned at all, I can see where it would be problematic, but trying to address that situation would likely add a lot of complexity to Canvas code and may end up with some undesirable side effects.  As much as I hate to say this, it may be something you need to either live with, or manually adjust the column positions for after doing the initial sort.

I hope some of this info may be helpful.

-Chris