Question

I have a question regarding hiding one particular course setting on a global level.  When you click on any course in Canvas, and then access the "Settings" for that course, then scroll toward the bottom, there is an option titled "Hide totals in student grades summary." This is on by default, and it was requested of me to see if there is a way to globally have this turned off (checked) by default for all of our Canvas courses as we don't want this option available for our courses. I have attached a screenshot of the setting I am speaking of.

Wondering if anyone else has done this?

Thanks,

Jeff Morgan

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NoahBoswell · Accepted Answer

Hi there @morgan_j ,

You cannot globally change this setting for all courses, at least without using custom JavaScript or C++.

However, I agree with you that it would be nice to be able to do this. I recommend submitting this as a feature idea for potential implementation in the future! How do I create a new idea in the Instructure Community?

Best,
Noah

Chris · Accepted Answer

Hi @morgan_j,

I think the replies provided earlier have provided some of the pieces you'd need for this to be workable, but I wanted ot try to bring everything together for you in a single post...

In my view, there are really 3 distinct needs that you have around this:

1 - Hiding this setting on the course settings page.  This would need to be done by using CSS and perhaps some Javascript as well (depending how fancy you wanted to get) in your accont theme.  The CSS to hide that would be:

div.checkbox-flex-container:has(> input#course_hide_distribution_graphs) {
	display:none !important;
}

Using just CSS would hide the option from everyone, including admins.  If you still wanted admins to see that option, that's where javascript would come in to selectively apply that CSS (or essentially override it with additional CSS).  There are multiple ways you can accomplish this, but the basic concept is to use an if statement to only apply the code to certain users.  If you wanted to go this direction and don't know how, please let us know and we could get more in-depth.

2 - Changing this setting in all existing courses.  @ThayerMerritt gave a basic version of the API call you'd need to do to accomplish this in each course.  There are a lot of scripting languages that can make use of the Canvas API, so if you're familiar with any of them you're off to a good start.  You'd want to first list courses, then for each course do the call to change that setting.

3 - Having this setting the way you'd like it in new courses.  For this, I'd honestly recommend using a course template at your root account level.  Set this setting up the way you want in the template (perhaps do this before #1 if you're going to hide the setting from all), and then it will apply to all courses going forward.

Doing these three things should set you up for success.  I didn't want to make this post too long and detailed, since I'm not sure how familiar you are with any of these concepts.  Please let us know if you need more detail and I'm sure someone will be happy to expand on any of this.

-Chris