Quickly checking off homework

[CassieSprenger]

I am looking for a way to quickly record if a student has completed daily PAPER homework as  I walk around the room and record it in Canvas. Currently I record it on a paper seating chart and transfer to Canvas later.

[James · Accepted solution]

@CassieSprenger 

Canvas used to have a mobile app named MagicMarker that was designed to quickly record things that happen during class. I had last looked for it almost exactly 4 years ago when someone asked about it. I mentioned at the time to not get your hopes up that it was still supported. The link to the documentation doesn't work anymore and almost every reference has been scrubbed from the Canvas community. Let's assume that's not an option.

It sounds like your grade has only two scores. If you have more than two scores possible, then it's probably faster to just enter them directly into the gradebook.

Here's how I would handle your situation using the Canvas gradebook (not SpeedGrader) in a web browser.

1. Open the gradebook and put down grades for those who did not do the homework or might be excused.
2. Then use the Set default grade option within the gradebook to give the points to those who did the homework. Do not override existing grades.

In the sad situation where more students do not complete the assignment than do, you would reverse the order. Put in the grade for those who did the homework and use Set default grade to assign the grade to those who did not.

Another option is to export the gradebook, open it in Excel, make the changes and save it, and then import it back into Canvas. There's obviously some extra overhead involved in that process, but it may have some advantage if you only enter grades periodically rather than daily (not a best practice), if you want to sort the list by the order the sit in the classroom to make grade transfer easier,

If you wanted to, you could export the gradebook once at the beginning of the semester and delete all the columns except for the required ones and those that relate to the homework grades you're talking about. Then you could quickly enter the grades each day, save the Excel gradebook, and import it into Canvas. There would not need to be a reason to re-export the gradebook unless you added new assignments to Canvas. If you deleted or unpublished an assignment in Canvas, you could just delete the corresponding column from your spreadsheet.

The next option is not a possibility for most people, but I mention it in case you have some programming skill (or have support from someone who does). That's to create your own external system.

I record attendance daily in my general education statistics classes, but I only have four grades in Canvas for attendance for the term. I have 44 meeting periods during my term and so every 11 days is rolled into one assignment. It also keeps the number of assignments in the gradebook down (my assignments load soooo slowly as it is). I want to update the grade daily (best practice), but there is that extra calculation involved of combining attendance into a single grade. I have a Google Sheet I use to take attendance with the proportion of each day they attended (1=full attendance, 0.5=half attendance, 0=absent). I round to the nearest 0.1 of a class period. Then my sheet uses Google Apps Script to add a menu that updates grades using the Canvas API. As students filter into class, I quickly put a 1 in the roster. I adjust as people filter in or leave early. At the end of class, I run the menu command to update the grades.

That's similar to what you want, but not at all trivial for someone without programming skills to accomplish. It shows how Canvas is flexible enough that people can write their own solutions.