Step 3: How to exclude assignments from your Canvas gradebook

Canvas creates all imported Savvas items as Canvas Assignments. However, you will most likely only want a subset of the Savvas items you added to your course to count towards the overall grade.

In this tutorial we will show you two ways different ways you can exclude assignments from counting towards the overall grade:

Which option should you use? If you have a lot of Savvas items that do not need to be graded we suggest using Option 1.

Option 1: Using the Assignment Groups and setting the weight for each group

For Option 1 you will divide your assignments into groups and set the weight each group counts towards the overall grade. You will create one group called "Not graded" and set the weight to 0% so that none of the assignments in the group will count towards the overall grade.

To add a group, click on the +Group button. Give your group a name the percent it will count towards the overall grade. 

Create a group called "Not graded" and give it a weight of 0%. You can also rename the default Assignment group "Not graded." We will show you how to edit the weights below.

If you need to manage the weights for your assignment groups click on the right menu and select Assignment Groups Weight.

Check the Weight final grade based on assignment option. Then enter the percent each category is weighted. 

Make sure you have a "Not graded" group with a weight of 0%.

Once you set the weights and hit Save, you will see the weight percent for each assignment group.

Now, navigate to your course's gradebook and scroll all the way to the end of the gradebook. You will see the average grade for each assignment group and the percent weight for each.

Note how the Total score takes into account the weight for each group and how the Not graded group does not count towards the students' overall grade.

Your gradebook may get very large. If you want to see how the students are doing on a particular assignment group, go to View menu and select Filters and Assignment Groups.

You can now filter and see only the assignments for a particular assignment group.

Set the SIS sync option

If you want an assignment to count towards the overall grade and you want it to sync with your SIS, simply check the Sync to SIS option.

Option 2: Using the "Do not count this assignment towards the overall grade" option

Step 1: Do not count the assignment towards the overall grade

To exclude an assignment from counting towards the overall grade select the option "Do not count this assignment towards the final grade." For more see Canvas online help: How to exclude an assignment from the overall grade.

We recommend you also set the points to 0 so it is clear to your students that this assignment is not worth any points. 

Step 2. Use Assignment Groups to filter assignments 

You can create an Assignment Group so you can filter for different types of assignments and to filter out assignments that do not count towards the overall grade. 

In this section we show you how use Assignment Groups to filter out those assignments that you marked as not counting towards the overall grade. 

To begin, select [Create Group] and create a new Assignment Group. In the example below we created one called "Not Graded Group."

Set the Assignment Group to the "Not Graded Group" (or whatever the name you gave your group).

In the gradebook select Filters > Assignment Groups.

Now you can filter by "Not Graded Group" (or whatever name you gave your group) to see those assignments you do not want to count to the overall grade. 

Likewise, you can also use the filter and select "Assignments" and see the assignments you do want to count to the overall grade.

For more see Canvas online help: How to use filter rows and columns in the Gradebook.

Step 3 (optional): Make it obvious the assignment is not graded

We recommend that you indicate in the title or description of the assignment that the item is not graded. It makes it clear to teachers and students that even though the Savvas item is a Canvas Assignment it does not count towards their grade.