Grading

Grade Posting Policy

Grade posting policy determines when grades become visible to students. Grades can be released automatically or manually, but we recommend manual posting so that you can control when grades are released. If you use one of our Canvas course templates, your course's grade posting policy has been set to manual.

• UW IT's Guide to Canvas Grade Posting Policy

• How do I select a grade posting policy for a course in the Gradebook?

Grade with SpeedGrader

• SpeedGrader Instructions from the Instructure Instructor Guide. This site has everything you need to know about using SpeedGrader.

• DocViewer allows instructors to mark up and comment on assignment submissions inside the web browser. This link is to the DocViewer instructions in the Canvas Instructor Guide.

• Simcheck Plagiarism Detection can be enabled per assignment. You can access the similarity report within SpeedGrader.

Enable an ISchool Grading Scheme

Based on a great deal of research, the iSchool has created two "standard" conversion scales (grading schemes) that anybody can use in their courses. These schemes have been made available at our sub-account level and are easily accessed from any course without having to manually create a scale using the Canvas tool or the UW-IT tool.

To add an iSchool scheme to your course:

1. Click on Settings at the bottom of the left side menu

2. Check the box next to Enable course grading scheme

3. Click on Set grading scheme if one hasn't already been set, or click on View Grading Scheme if one has already been set.

4. Click on Select another scheme

5. Click the desired scheme in the pane on the left, either the iSchool Undergraduate Scheme or the iSchool graduate Scheme.

6. Scroll down to click on the Use this grading standard button.

7. Click Done, and then click Update Course Details

Whatever you use as your grading conversion scale, it is highly recommended that you add the break points of the scale to your course so that students will know where the cutoffs are for each point of the scale. If using one of the iSchool schemes, be sure to link to it in your syllabus.

Hide Grade Distribution Graphs

By default, Canvas allows students to see grade distribution graphs for each assignment. Distribution graphs allow students to see their score, the high score, the low score and the mean for each individual assignment. If you don't want your students to see this data, follow the instructions below:

1. Login to Canvas and select the course in which you want to hide the grade distribution graphs

2. Click on Settings at the bottom of the left side menu

3. Click on the Course Details tab

4. At the bottom of the list of settings, click on the More Options link

5. Check the Hide grade distribution graphs from students option

6. Click the Update Course Details button

Students will no longer have access to the grade distribution information.

Submit Final Grades

Instructors are required to submit their students' final grades at the end of the quarter. Simply entering grades in Canvas doesn't fulfill this requirement. Please see below for instructions on how to submit grades.

• End of Quarter Checklist

• Exporting Grades from Canvas video tutorial

• Import and Convert Canvas Grades for Submission

Grade FAQs

• How do I give extra credit in a course?

• How do I create rules (e.g. drop lowest score) for an assignment group?

• How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups (e.g. 20% final project, 30% exercises, etc)?