Article Intended For
This article is intended for Penn State faculty and staff who teach or manage courses in Canvas.
Introduction
Over summer 2019, Canvas made some feature updates to the gradebook. The grade posting policy is a new feature of the gradebook that was introduced. This grade posting policy sets how grades and comments are released to students. This feature replaced previously known mute and unmute assignments as well as introduced some visual changes to these icons.
Article Body
With the grade posting policy feature, assignment grades may be manually or automatically posted.
Manually posted grades allows an instructor to hide all grades and comments until the instructor chooses to post the grades. This is the new name for a muted assignment.
Automatically posted grades for an assignment is the equivalent of an unmuted assignment where grades and comments are immediately posted.
Visual changes to this new feature include the replacement of the previously known Mute icon with an Eye icon, which represents the assignment’s grade visibility.
A transparent (grey) Eye icon displays for assignments with a manually posted grading policy. When an instructor enters a grade for a manually posted assignment, the Eye icon changes to a solid state (bright orange) to show the assignment has been assigned grades that are not visible to a student.
Grades can also be hidden or re-hidden at any time, which may be needed to conceal or adjust previously posted grades. The assignment menu Hide Grades option displays for any assignment where grades are visible to students.
Figure 2: Showing the assignment menu Hide Grades option, which displays for any assignment where grades are visible to students.
When grades are hidden, the visibility Eye icon changes to a solid state (bright orange) to indicate grades have been assigned that are not visible to students. Grades can be re-posted at any time using the assignment menu.
Figure 3: Showing when grades are hidden, the visibility Eye icon changes to a solid state (bright orange) to indicate grades have been assigned that are not visible to students.
Links
These changes are highlighted in the updated pre-recorded one-hour demonstration on new gradebook features. Transcripts of the video recording are also available for download.