Muted assignment but comments in rubric shows

[shiq1]

I might need to ask a favor from our Canvas genus-group.

I've asked by one of our faculty in our school that the comments in the rubric showed up to students, but not score even when the assignment itself was muted and hid  (students can use the rubric to calculate their scores which becomes an issue). Technically, when we mute it, students should unable to see scores and comments in the rubric. 

My co-workers and I looked into it and found one weird thing. In the overall view of the Grades, the assignment shows as muted and hid, but when you switch to Individual view, the assignment shows as unmuted. After that, I checked the mute assignment button in the individual view, it made no difference. Students are still able to the rubric. I wonder what kind of glitch it is, and any chance any of us has encountered this before?

I tried to replicate this issue in this instructor's course specifically in other assignments and in my sandbox as well but failed. I'm running out of ideas but lucky I have our community!

Thanks for any info!

[kblack]

Hi  @shiq1  - I wonder if some of what your instructor saw--and what your current testing is not seeing--may have been caused by timing; namely, the timing of the release of the new Gradebook the weekend of January 18 and the fact that on that same release one can now post comments but not grades.  You may ultimately have to ask Canvas Support about this.  I do not have any answers, but rather several suggestions.

First, let's be clear: there is no more muting an assignment. That has been replaced with the grade posting policy. My favorite thing to show faculty has been this excellent overview, assuming that the faculty member was used to the previous muting behavior:  New Gradebook and SpeedGrader Muting Behavior Changes 

Anyway, I'm wondering if it's possible that your instructor had an assignment muted when the changeover occurred. What I do NOT know for certain is what happened to those assignments at the time the New Gradebook was pushed out to all institutions on January 18.  I think assignments that were muted in the old/legacy gradebook were set to a Manual posting policy with the update, but I may be 100% incorrect on that assumption.

Also, can you verify with the instructor if s/he at anytime POSTED grades, even if there were no grades (only comments) to post....perhaps in error?  The reason is that with that deployment of the New Gradebook on January 18, instructors can now post comments only but not grades...and yes, that includes rubric comments.  (I just tested this on a sample class to be sure.)  So while your own testing cannot replicate this, my concern is what the instructor may have done to lead to this.  I can verify that at any point before the posting appears, students are definitely NOT able to see rubric comments, as your own testing has likely shown as well.  With all of the adjustments made by faculty (and us!) to the new grade posting policy, it's entirely possible the faculty member may have clicked that "post" option at some point.

And finally, the Individual View of the gradebook should not be showing an assignment as either muted or having a grade posting policy at all.....or whether the current grades are hidden.  In fact, this is specifically pointed out in the blue area at the top of this documentation: How do I view assignments or students individually in the Gradebook? , where it is stated "Late policies, posting policies, and some sorting and filtering options are not currently supported in Individual View."  Furthermore, whether the gradebook is set to Individual View or not should not have any bearing whatsoever on what students can or cannot see.  It is strictly a matter of whether there was a grade posting policy and whether or not grades were posted, and both of those are best seen in the regular/full view of the gradebook.

So again...no answers, but maybe some things to check into.

[venitk]

 @shiq1 ‌, I recently heard from some of my instructors that last term (so before the ability to post comments Ken mentioned), students could see comments when an assignment was on Manual (we were already on the New Gradebook by that point). They told me well after the fact, so I couldn't submit a ticket or check that they had it on manual correctly or anything. But they said students could see comments without seeing their grade. I'm not sure if they meant comments within a rubric. 

I asked them to let me know ASAP if it ever happens again. 

I also tried testing it, but without knowing the particulars of the assignments and the circumstances around students seeing their grade, I couldn't really get far in testing.