Late penalty

[PedroDerosa]

Why can you only set a late penalty policy to the entire gradebook, as opposed to individual assignments or at least individual groups, forcing all assignments and type of assignments to have the same late penalty.  I asked a rep via chat and they told me that they setup up Canvas this way because, in general, Universities set late policies for the entire campus and do not allow instructors to override. This is the first time I heard something like that, it makes no sense to me. But even if that was the case, there is no reason for which a homework, a quiz, a project, a take home test, etc will all have to have the same late policy.  So, how can we ask Canvas to look into this and consider allowing more flexibility in assigning late penalties? 

[VPundir · Accepted solution]

Yes, the most common use case is to have a late submission penalty policy, which defines the penalty across the school, or department. In any case, within a course, usually idiosyncratic late penalties would not be expected.

That said, you can suggest your requirement as a feature idea to the Instructure team here.

[VPundir · Accepted solution]

Understood. I hope you also understand that this creates a "policy jungle" for the students - a complex scenario in which they need to keep track of and understand numerous late submission penalty policies.

Next, hope you are aware that Canvas permits you to create graded assignments that do not contribute to the overall/final grade.

> If there is a default policy with the option to change for individual courses or individual groups, that will work for those with uniform policies and those that do not have that. So why not?

Because resources are limited and therefore there are opportunity costs for any feature development. In other words, the development of features that address small edge cases usually comes at the cost of development of features that may be more useful or more widely useful.

That said, my above comment is a generic response to "why not", not based on an assessment of the broad-based (or not)-ness of the need for your requested feature. I am glad you managed to post the feature request in Ideas, and hope that if there is enough demand for it then Instructure picks it up and implements it.

[VPundir · Accepted solution]

Yes, the most common use case is to have a late submission penalty policy, which defines the penalty across the school, or department. In any case, within a course, usually idiosyncratic late penalties would not be expected.

That said, you can suggest your requirement as a feature idea to the Instructure team here.

[PedroDerosa]

Thank you for your reply, I clicked on the link and it took me to the same page where I post my original message, I did not see any "suggestion box" or something like that. The rep that suggested me this forum mention something about the community getting behind so I wonder if this will get to the developers if enough people express the same concern. At any rate, thank you for taking the time to help me!

I do want to say that I am really surprised, I have been a University professor (in the USA) for over 20 years, worked at three different Universities, collaborate with a number of Universities and, as a Program Chair, I talk to a lot of students that transfer from other Universities and this is a surprise to me. But also, how does that work? is the late policy on a class like First Year Education the same as in a senior course? and even within a course, why would the late penalty for, let's say, a take-home exam, be the same as for a homework, a bonus activity, or a project report? Sorry, this is beyond my concern with Canvas, I am simply surprised. 

[mbrokowski]

I have also been at several universities, from both sides of the podium. It's not uncommon for an institution to have "policies" that are never enforced, and that are often unknown to most of the faculty. Regardless of whether there is some institution-wide "late policy" for assignment submissions, I have never even heard of a place that didn't allow each instructor to maintain their own late policy for each class and different policies for projects, homeworks, take-home exams, etc. as appropriate.

[VPundir]

> is the late policy on a class like First Year Education the same as in a senior course?

Absolutely.

> even within a course, why would the late penalty for, let's say, a take-home exam, be the same as for a homework, a bonus activity, or a project report?

Why wouldn't it?

A standard late policy, at least within the course, if not the whole department or institution brings with it clarity and predictability, without students having to wonder or scramble to dig into the syllabus in order to figure out for each individual assignment.

Remember, the late policy can be set to deduct x% of the assignment's marks per day of delay (as opposed to x marks), so it is suitably weighted per assignment's importance.

> I clicked on the link and it took me to the same page where I post my original message

I see you managed to submit the idea 👍
https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Ideas/Different-late-penalties-for-different-assignments-o... 

[PedroDerosa]

I am new to this forum, so I don't know how appropriate is for me to keep pushing this discussion, so I'll first go to my point and then I share an example from one of my courses where I found different late policies for different assignment type appropriate.  The main point is that whether they don't exist or they are not enforce in many campuses late policies varies, so why have a one-size-fits-all solution? If there is a default policy with the option to change for individual courses or individual groups, that will work for those with uniform policies and those that do not have that. So why not? BTW, this is not my idea, some online software tools do that already. For instance, the software tool that comes with the book on one of my classes let you setup default late policies for each kind of assignment and then will let you override the policy within each individual assignments. If they allow that, is because people use it.

Here is my example, I teach a science class which is a part of the general education curriculum for non-science majors (the class where I use the homework platform I mentioned above).This is a large class, so minimizing manual overrides is important. One of the type of activities I assign, consists of adaptive modules meant to train students on a particular subject (not to test them), so the due date for those is before the class where I cover that topic. I can simply not accept late submissions, however, I believe in the value of the activity and want my students to still do it, even if late. I can't allow late submissions without a penalty, if I want to "encourage" students to do it before the class, but I can't just give zero to those the do it late or there will be no incentive for them to do it at all. However, once the class passed, I rather prioritize the next activity, so they are on time for that one, than the old one, so I just apply a flat late penalty on this activity (something else Canvas does not allow you to do either, but I would be ok with progressive penalty, so no big deal there). A homework, on the other hand, I do want them to do it by the deadline, or if they are late, as soon as possible, so penalties for being late on a homework are much harsher, especially because in most classes I release the homework solutions after some time, so I cannot longer accept a homework after I release the solution. In my opinion I should not be forced by the software I use to either be harsher on the former type of activity or softer on the later. Not all courses are the same and not all assignment are the same, we should trust that instructors know what they are doing and give them some freedom to manage the class. 

[VPundir · Accepted solution]

Understood. I hope you also understand that this creates a "policy jungle" for the students - a complex scenario in which they need to keep track of and understand numerous late submission penalty policies.

Next, hope you are aware that Canvas permits you to create graded assignments that do not contribute to the overall/final grade.

> If there is a default policy with the option to change for individual courses or individual groups, that will work for those with uniform policies and those that do not have that. So why not?

Because resources are limited and therefore there are opportunity costs for any feature development. In other words, the development of features that address small edge cases usually comes at the cost of development of features that may be more useful or more widely useful.

That said, my above comment is a generic response to "why not", not based on an assessment of the broad-based (or not)-ness of the need for your requested feature. I am glad you managed to post the feature request in Ideas, and hope that if there is enough demand for it then Instructure picks it up and implements it.

[PedroDerosa]

Yes, you are right about the impact on students and I hope the late policy was the only policy that is not uniform across courses. You will often find me carrying the opposite argument, asking for more uniformity across courses. 

Anyways thank you for your help. The first time I clicked on the link you sent me, the link to post ideas was not active (something wrong with my computer), so I thought it was just a title, when I tried again, it was active and was able to make the post. 

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

@PedroDerosa ...

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The first time I clicked on the link you sent me, the link to post ideas was not active (something wrong with my computer), so I thought it was just a title, when I tried again, it was active and was able to make the post. 

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Most likely nothing wrong with your computer.  Are you new to the Canvas Community website?  I looked at your profile, and it looks like you joined on December 1, 2023.  Your current rank is "Community Member", but that's not the same rank you start out with.  In order to "level up" or "rank up", you have to do certain things here in the Community.  When you "rank up", that will give you additional capabilities...including creating new ideas here in the Community.  Here's a Guide with descriptions of the ranking system:

How do I rank up in the Instructure Community?

I hope this will be of some help to you!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello @PedroDerosa ...

I don't necessarily have an answer for you, but I wanted to share this linked Guide with you in the event that you've not had a chance to read through the information in it.  Specifically, make sure to read all the information in the light blue box at the top of the Guide:

How do I apply a Late Submission policy in the Gradebook?

I hope this will be of some help to you.

[PedroDerosa]

Thank you for taking the time to send me information, Yes, I did go over the procedure to setup the policy and that is where I found of the limitation I am concerned about. Thank you again!