T2MTU: Tidy Up Gradebook Weights

by Amanda Dills
Sept. 6, 2022

This month, our Tuesday Tune Up tutorials are going to be focused on helping you clean up your Canvas gradebook.

If you’ve been working with Canvas for any length of time – and especially if you’ve copied content from one course into another – you have seen how quickly the Canvas gradebook can become unorganized and overwhelming. So, to help combat that overwhelm, we’re going to give you a specific step you can take each week to help you clean up your Gradebook and ensure that, if you’re using Canvas to calculate grades, that those grades are calculating exactly how you intend.

Watch the video below for more information, or keep scrolling for written directions:

Before we begin with this week’s tutorial, let’s start with a few truths about the Canvas gradebook. You’ll need to get your brain around all 4 of these truths before you can do any real gradebook clean up:

4 Fundamental Canvas Gradebook Truths:

  1. The Assignments page is the “back end” of your Canvas gradebook; the way that page is set up, dictates the way your grades appear and calculate.
  2. Assignment “Groups” are categories of gradebook columns that CAN (but do not have to) affect grade calculation. (They are totally separate from the Student “Groups” feature.
  3. Unless you tell it otherwise, Canvas assumes all points are equal when calculating grades.
  4. Canvas’s natural tendency is for GRADEBOOK CHAOS!

Tidy Up Gradebook Weights

Lots of people use gradebook “weighting” to calculate their course grades. For example, Tests = 30% of the final grade, Homework = 20% of the final grade and so on. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to edit those weights to help ensure that your grade is calculating the way you intend.

First, to turn Gradebook weighting on and off, go to the Assignments page of your course (which, remember, is the back end of your gradebook), click on the 3-dot snowman menu, and select “Assignment Groups Weight.”

From here, you can turn assignment group weighting on and off by checking or unchecking the box, and – once weights are turned on – also specify what percentage of the final grade (if any) each group receives. To make edits to these percentages, just type the number in the boxes as needed.

A few things to know about how these percentages affect your grade calculations:

  • All grading groups/categories are worth 0% by default. If a category is worth 0% of the total grade, you will still be able to see that category’s score in your gradebook, but it will not be factored into the final grade.
  • If you do NOT have weighted grading turned on, then Canvas will calculate the final grade strictly based on the amount of points earned / points possible, regardless of what Assignment groups you have set up.
  • You can make changes to category weights at any time and student overall grades will be instantly updated without individual grades being affected. (This is not true when you change the point totals for specific assignments.)
  • Unless you have a specific reason NOT to do this, it is important that you make the total of percentage weights = 100% (or less). (Canvas will tell you what your current total percentage is, but will let you make this number anything from 0% to 200% and beyond.)
    • Possible reasons to NOT have your total weights percentage NOT equal 100% would be if you wanted to allow students the opportunity for extra credit (ex: the highest grade possible in the course is 105% rather than 100%) or if you are using your gradebook for record keeping only and NOT any calculations).

If you have specific questions or need help with ensuring your gradebook is calculating the way you want it to, please contact ID3. The Canvas Gradebook is… shall we say, unintuitive, and we are happy to help you make sure that your grades are calculating precisely the way you want!

Today’s Action Step:

  • View the Assignment Group weights on your Canvas Assignments page, and make sure the calculation settings represent exactly how you want your course grades to be calculated.
    1. Make sure group weighting is on or off, whichever you prefer.
    2. If weighting is on, make sure the percentages match what is in your course syllabus.
    3. Make sure your weights = 100% or less.
    4. Make sure that any assignment groups you do NOT want to contribute to the final grade are listed as 0%.

Like this Tutorial? Click HERE to view all the Tuesday 2-Minute Tune Up articles!

Got Questions? ID3 is here to help!
Contact: Tami | Carlos | Amanda | Whitley

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