Grade Posting Policy for pending student payment

Question

Hi all,

I am new to this community and I would like to check whether for the Grade Posting Policy feature is there a way for students to not view their grades/ results if they have pending payment/ statuses that disables them from seeing. If need to build an API for it, is there a documentation for it.

Hope to hear from anyone soonest!

nwilson7 · Accepted Answer

@ZarianRahmat There is nothing in Canvas that would block a student from seeing a grade based on payment status since there are no payment systems that are native to Canvas.  I realize many payment systems can be integrated but since they are not directly part of Canvas, there is nothing in the UI for them.  I suppose there might be a way to write an API for it, but this would also be different depending on what payment gateway/system you are using.  Maybe others in the community have ideas...

For us, Canvas is NOT the official system for grades even though all the grades (well most) are visible in Canvas.  Our Student Information System (SIS) is our source of truth so financials are tracked in that system.

Not sure that helps much!

-Nick

Chris · Accepted Answer

Hi @ZarianRahmat

I'm not sure that trying to tackle this in the Canvas UI is really the best approach.  I think you'd probably want to try to address the issue using your SIS integration, depending how that works.  Ours is built in-house, so we have a lot of control over what we send to Canvas.  For example, if a student is on a waitlist for a course, we enroll them in Canvas as an observer, rather than a student.  This way they can see what's going on in the course, but they cannot submit assignments, take quizzes, etc and cause any confusion about what their enrollment status really is.  For this situation, I could see something similar working.  Create a custom role in Canvas (maybe based on student, maybe observer), and adjust the permissions of that role to get close to what you want.  Then your SIS integration send that as the role for any students with pending payments.

I would also say hiding grades because of a missing payment may really do more harm than good.  I totally understand the desire for students to be on-time with payments, but if they don't see grades and feedback in a timely, it could really put them behind for the rest of the course and start to introduce new problems down the road for the entire program.  Just something to think about for those who may come across this thread later.

-Chris