T2MTU: Using “Default Grades”
Sometimes when grading, you need to award all or most of your students the same score. In today’s “Tuesday 2-Minute Tune Up” video, I’m going to show you how to do that with 1 click.
Click the image below to start the video, or keep scrolling for a written tutorial.
Using Default Grades in Canvas
- To set the default grade for an assignment, first click on the 3-dot snowman icon that appears when you hover your mouse over that column heading in the gradebook.
- Then select “Set Default Grade.”

From here you can type in whatever grade you want to assign to EACH student. You can choose to overwrite or leave any scores currently in the column.
⭐HINT: If you know that only a few students are going to receive a grade that is NOT the “default,” you may want to add the “outlier” grades first, and then use the Default Grade function to fill in the rest of the grade cells. Try to avoid making a bunches of changes to a student’s grade, in case they have their grade notifications turned on.
⭐ ANOTHER OPTION: Use the “Grade Posting Policy” feature to switch grading to “Manual” so that you use Default Grades and/or make edits without the grades showing up for students.

For more tips like this one to speed up your grading time in Canvas, check out this recent ID3 Blog Post: “10 Hacks to Reduce Grading Time in Canvas.”
And don’t forget to contact your ID3 Specialist if you have any questions!
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