Why would this be a thing?! It doesn't make any sense. I can't give an assignment that doesn't have a grade?
Some examples of not graded assignments: reading assignments where you can't tell if they did it, assignments that remind students when a quiz is going to happen. The blessing of not graded assignments is that they don't show in the gradebook.
Hi @MrHeyl,
I think the design is setup this way in Canvas because external tools often pass grades back from the tool to Canvas. If the assignment isn't set up for grading, that would cause all kinds of failures. It's pretty much impossible to know ahead of time what tools may try to send a grade back and which ones may not, so this the result.
Now as a workaround, you can set the assignment to 0 points and click the "do not count towards final grade" box to get the external tool option. You could also potentially use modules to link to your external tool instead of making it an assignment (not possible with every tool configuration, but pretty common).
-Chris
Thanks for the reply. I feel like with Canvas there's a lot "well yes but…" type answers. I do what you said currently, but it still all shows up in student work and that's not how I want it set up.
If the issue is the tool is sending a grade, why wouldn't Canvas just override that? Similar to how once you mark an assignment as missing, it stays that way even if a grade is put in there. Not to mention how many clicks it takes to add and remove statuses on assignments.
Correct, I don't want these assignments to show up in the gradebook. Not all assignments apply to all students, so then I get "but it says missing??" ugh
Hello @MrHeyl I have a few ideas to share.
In the assignment settings there is an assign to section which enables us to assign to individuals vs. everybody (all students). -
Pages can be configured with the same assign to capability along with a due date. I mention this as some external tools have embed code available that can be embedded into the page HTML and so an actual assignment is not needed. Therefore, no gradebook column is created.
Often times external tool integrations define what can and cannot be done in Canvas. Should there be an integration that requires use of a Canvas assignment in order to launch the tool LTI, and you must assign points vs. doing what Chris suggested (0 points and click the "do not count towards final grade" box ), then another suggestion is to create an assignment group worth zero % of the total grade and position those assignments within this assignment group. Not clean approach but that ensures there is no impact on grading.
@JOANNORDILLE, for the use cases you describe I would not use an assignment.
Instead, I would use a page to deliver information to the students, reminding them of the quiz or to do the reading, etc. You can set a due date on pages. It would be information or a reminder delivered to the student, and it would show up in the to-do list. You could also place it in a module to give information due date with no points and no gradebook columns. Would that work for you?
@MrHeyl If you are using Canvas modules to organize your content, go to the module and, instead of adding an assignment, add the external tool itself. This would be a link to the external tool, which would place it in the students' module, but it would not create a grade book column. Whether this works or not may also depend on the tool you are using. What particular tools are resulting in grade book columns when you would rather avoid them?
Thank you, that may be a good step! Thanks
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