Individual student grade override within group assignments

[JasonTucker]

I'm having students work in long-term groups over multiple assignments. The group assignment functions work great, except when one student flakes on the others. While usually I want everyone within one group to get the same grade, if one student doesn't do one component, but comes back to do group work on subsequent assignments, I need to be able to ovrerride that individual student's grade to account for the work that they missed but that their partners did not. Right now, it looks like I can't change one person's grade on a group assignment without also changing the others or without deleting the group entirely, along with all their submitted work.

Is there a way to individualize grades as needed within a group assignment?

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @JasonTucker,

The only way I know of to do this would be to use the "assign grades individually" option in the group assignment setup.  I'm not sure if you can change that setting after doing your normal group grading to just change one student or if it would revert a bunch of students to having no grade.  If this is a frequent issue, I'd probably recommend checking the option by default, even though it will create a bit more grading work for you.

Hope this helps a bit!

-Chris

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @JasonTucker,

The only way I know of to do this would be to use the "assign grades individually" option in the group assignment setup.  I'm not sure if you can change that setting after doing your normal group grading to just change one student or if it would revert a bunch of students to having no grade.  If this is a frequent issue, I'd probably recommend checking the option by default, even though it will create a bit more grading work for you.

Hope this helps a bit!

-Chris

[TanyaUponAvon]

Hi @chriscas , 

I have a follow-up question to this one about assigning individual grades to a group project. I'm an instructional designer working with a faculty member who has students working as a group, but submitting their papers separately. What she wants is to have all of the students in the group submit their papers in the same assignment, so she created a group assignment. She was thinking that the "assign grades individually" function would allow students to submit their separate papers in one place. However, only one item (i.e., paper) can be submitted in a group assignment, despite the fact that you can grade the students individually/separately--it's only that one item that can be submitted.

That is, they can be graded differently on the same item that has been submitted, but they can't submit multiple assignments in the same group assignment space; she has to make a new individual assignment for the students to submit their separate papers to, regardless of the fact that the students worked in group. Can you confirm for me that this is accurate? Is there any other way you know of to allow multiple submissions in one group assignment? 

Thanks,

Tanya

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @TanyaUponAvon,

Yes, that is basically accurate.  Group assignments in Canvas are really designed for scenarios where students are working together in a group (or perhaps team is another term you could use) to come up with one set of deliverables.  Even with the individual grading option turned on, when an assignment is configured as a group assignment, every submission a group member would make is basically submitted and shown for all group members.  If everyone is submitting their own individual/different work, I would likely not check the group option at all for the assignment, since it's not really needed in that case.

Does that make sense, or am I misinterpreting the situation?

-Chris

[TanyaUponAvon]

Thank you so much for your speedy and relevant response! You did understand the situation perfectly. 

[jake_dempsey]

I'm replying with info from an older post so that this comes up as the newest. I have tested and you can switch a group assigment from the "all group members get same grade" to "individual grading" after students have submitted the assignment. The grades assigned to everyone from the initial group grading will be preserved.

For example - you give the group a grade of 85% but know that one student did not fully participate. When you switch to "grade individually" every member of the group still has 85% but now you can change the specific student's grade. There is even an option to post a comment that is specific to the student rather than to the whole group. You can also use the Excused / Missing / Late functionality of the gradebook for a specific student.

[ElainePerea]

I see Jake saying a few weeks ago that you can switch back and forth, and that's what I had been doing previously and it worked all of last school year. My institution ungraded over the summer, though, and now this feature no longer works! I've just watched the grade book switch all the grades for the group members when I over rode one student with a zero. Seems the only solution is to keep group grading turned off to issue zeros. Boo!

[jake_dempsey]

What did you upgrade about your Canvas? If it's something we might do in the future, I'll need to let faculty who I consulted with about switching group-assignments know.