T2MTU: Drag-and-Drop Gradebook Column Organization

The Canvas Gradebook can get pretty unwieldy pretty quickly, but you can tame it with some simple dragging and dropping.

Today, in this week’s Tuesday 2 Minute Tune Up, I’m going to show you how you can drag and drop to rearrange the organization of your Canvas Gradebook.

Click on the video below to view, or keep scrolling for written directions.

Drag-and-Drop in the Canvas Gradebook

⭐ First of all, if you feel like you need to do a LOT of dragging and dropping and manipulating within your gradebook, I would strongly suggest setting up an appointment with your Instructional Designer to see if there are things in your Assignment area that can be streamlined.

However, if you’ve already streamlined down your Assignment Areas – or you’re just looking for a quick fix to help you in the moment, there are several different drag and drop actions you can take to make your gradebook more user-friendly for you.

• Option 1: Resize columns.
  When you hover your mouse over the border between columns in the gradebook, you’ll see it turns into a little resize arrow. Click and drag that resize arrow to the right of the column you want to resize to change the width of the column. You can use this technique to make the full name of a grade columns visible or perhaps to hide some Assignment Group columns that you can’t delete but don’t want to see.

⭐ PRO TIP: If you like narrow columns in your gradebook, think strategically about how you name your columns. Make sure the most important identifying information (or even an emoji) is the very first thing in your Assignment or Assignment Group Title.

e.g. ("Ch 1 Brown Textbook Questions" vs. "Brown Textbook Questions Ch 1")

• Option 2: Re-order your columns.
  If you click and drag in the middle of a gradebook column heading, you can move that column to a different order in the gradebook spreadsheet. This only changes the order of your columns in YOUR view of the gradebook – it does not change them on the Assignments page or for your students’ Gradebooks. (If you want to make the change visible for everyone, you’ll need to reorganize things on the Canvas Assignments page)

⭐ Important note: Rearranging the columns in your gradebook by dragging will ONLY change them in your individual gradebook view – not in the Assignment area OR in your students’ gradebooks – so use this technique sparingly and thoughtfully!

For more tips on better using your Canvas Gradebook, check out this post: 10 Hacks to Speed Up Grading in Canvas.

Or, reach out to an ID3 Instructional Design Specialist for further assistance!
Contact: Tami | Tanffy | Carlos | Simon | Amanda | Whitley