Changing the teacher of a class without losing data in gradebook

EdTechSpecialis

Hello, 

We have multiple cases of classes that need to have the teacher changed or added.  We have been following the procedure to do that, making sure that we add the end date for the previous teacher, and add the new teacher with the correct start date...  The problem is, when the new teacher opens the gradebook, the students are there, but all previous grades are gone.  It is catastrophic.  There must be a way to protect the grade data throughout the change in personnel.

Best regards, 

Miles Harris

 

 

melodyc_lam

Hi @EdTechSpecialis --

This is unfortunately the behavior that happens with any teacher of record change. I'm an admin for a very large school district in NC so I have processed a lot of tickets and requests for help in this exact same situation.

What actually happens between PowerSchool and Canvas is the following:

1) Teacher of record change happens in PowerSchool

2) On next sync, it detects that there was a teacher change, so a new course is created in Canvas for this new teacher of record

3) All sections are moved over from the old course to the new course, but the old course is still in Canvas, just with no students and no teacher.

In Canvas, student submissions and student grades are attached to enrollments, which live in the course and not with the student -- so as long as the OLD course is still there and undeleted, you can crosslist the students from the new course into the old course. Once the students are back into the old course, the submissions and grades are restored. In fact, the new teacher can resume teaching from the old course and everything will work, such as updated enrollments through the year from PowerSchool and the Grade Sync functionality.

Because your sections are created by SIS, the only way to make sure that everything works out with your SIS is to do a crosslist. Here are instructions to do so.

If you're the admin for your district, you should be able to find the old course in Canvas using the convention that was created with your integration and how your courses and subaccounts are set up. I can't speak to how it was done unless you're in NC, so this is an exercise left to you.

Hope this explanation helps and alleviates some of the concern/stress.