I’m a student exploring a small personal project related to Canvas grade notifications and student experience, and I wanted to ask about what is technically and policy-wise feasible within Canvas. Many students receive email notifications like “A new grade has been posted,” but then need to log into Canvas to actually see the grade. For some students, the issue isn’t just speed, but control — for example:
- wanting to know whether a grade is posted without immediately seeing the score
- wanting to delay viewing grades for specific courses until a chosen time
At my institution, students are not allowed to generate their own Canvas API access tokens, and API access is restricted to institution-approved apps.
My questions are:
- In environments where student API tokens are disabled, is there any supported or acceptable way for student-side tools (e.g. browser extensions) to surface grade information or manage grade-related notifications?
- Are there Canvas-supported mechanisms (settings, notification APIs, LTI patterns, etc.) that allow per-course or delayed grade notification behavior, beyond the current global notification settings?
- From a Canvas policy perspective, is reading/rendering already-visible grade data on the client side (e.g. via browser extensions acting only on the user’s own session) considered acceptable, or is this generally discouraged?
I’m not trying to bypass authentication or access data I shouldn’t have — just trying to understand the intended boundaries for student-facing customization and whether this kind of experience is something Canvas officially supports or explicitly avoids.
Any guidance on best practices, limitations, or recommended alternatives would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
