Hi,

We have recently come on board with Canvas as well and went through this same issue. I will answer your questions and tell you what I have done.

1) What is the "Default Grading Scheme" -- as in, how does canvas decide which one is the 4 schemes we have in place is the default if the user makes no scheme selection? I thought, at first, that it might be the one that can't be edited, but that's not the case.

The default scheme will have the identifier of "1" in the system. This is to say that if you run:

curl https://<URL>/api/v1/accounts/1/grading_standards \

-H 'Authorization: Bearer <token>'

It will return all the schemes for the account. #1 should be the default as it comes stock with the instance.

2) Is the API calling the only non-manual way to resolve this across the entire institution?

Yes, you need to make an API call to set the scheme for courses.

Here is what I do. I have a PERL script with my curl command. Inside the script is the scheme number, so when it is run the scheme is enabled and the default is set. We run this once per semester. To apply to each course, I use a text file of all the canvas_course_id values for the term. The PERL script calls it and loops through each of them to apply.

I am willing to share this with you by email if you would like it. Let me know.

Shane