Quick Tip: Handling Missing Submissions in the Canvas Gradebook
We hope your semester is off to a good start. The RCID team is back with a new Quick Tip Series that we hope you will find helpful!
New Quick Tip Series: Canvas Gradebook
Throughout this semester, the RCID team will focus our Quick Tip emails/blog posts on features and tools related to the Canvas Gradebook.
This series is meant to provide instructors with tips and tricks for setting up your Gradebook, navigating, leveraging tools to save you time, and above all, ensuring that your students can track their progress by viewing accurate grade information throughout the semester.
A Note About Canvas Gradebook Totals
Before we jump into this week’s topic, we need to review how Canvas calculates student grades. The Total column in the Canvas Gradebook maintains a running total. This means that it calculates a student’s grade based on the work that they have submitted and been graded on thus far, and it ignores the work that hasn’t yet been submitted/graded.
What does this mean for instructors?
To keep your total column up to date, you must enter zeros for all graded items that students have missed/not submitted. In the example below, you can see how Canvas would calculate a different total based on whether the Assignment 2 column is left blank vs. if a zero is entered.
| Assignment 1 50 points | Assignment 2 100 points | Total | Calculation | |
| Student A | 45 | - | 90% | 45 points earned divided by 50 points possible = .9 |
| Student B | 45 | 0 | 30% | 45 points earned divided by 150 points possible = .3 |
As you can see, if Student A in the example above missed Assignment 2 and a zero was not entered, they would see a 90% in their gradebook when, in fact, they are failing the course.
This leads us into our first topic in this series…
Quick Tip: Handling Missing Submissions in the Canvas Gradebook
Consider enabling the Missing Submission Policy in your Gradebook settings. Once enabled, this policy will automatically enter zeros for missed assignments, saving you time and ensuring that your students’ running totals are kept up to date.
After the due date and time for the assessment has passed, students who have not submitted will automatically be awarded zero (0) points for that assessment.
If you have students for whom you are allowing late submissions, you can either override the zero after they turn in the work, or you can set a separate due date for the individual student so that it is not marked as late.
Keep in mind: Since it’s the due date that triggers the policy, you will want to make sure each assessment in your course has an accurate due date and time set.
How to enable the Missing Submission Policy
- Navigate to the Gradebook in your Canvas course.
Click the Settings button (gear icon) in the top right corner. A panel will pop out.
On the Late Policy tab, select the checkbox to “Automatically apply grade for missing submissions.” Make sure the grade for missing submissions is set to 0%. Then click the Apply Settings button to save.
