Canvas - UW-Madison Final Grading Support Process, Common Issues, Solutions, and Resources
Overview
During the final grading period at the end of each semester, Learn@UW schedules final grading shifts for support staff and consultants. Many requests for assistance during that period are urgent and time-sensitive, so it’s important to be aware of what shifts you have been scheduled for and to be available during that time. Your final grading shifts will be on your Outlook calendar.
The Office of the Registrar supports Faculty Center, which is where instructors post final grades that will appear on students’ transcripts. It is also where instructors get the first CSV file with their class’s student roster. Instructors use the Faculty Center CSV file with the Faculty Center Grade Prep tool in Canvas.
Learn@UW is responsible for supporting the Canvas Grades tool and the Faculty Center Grade Prep tool in Canvas. The Faculty Center Grade Prep tool exports a second CSV which is importable into the Faculty Center and has both the student roster and grades. If an instructor is teaching a small course, it is often easier to manually enter grades. This process is for high enrollment courses. Generally, requests for assistance will be escalated via assigned Cherwell cases. Note: If you email responses to the Cherwell case from Outlook, make sure you don’t just email WiscIt - include direct emails to the instructor as well:
Resources
Learn@UW KnowledgeBase Documents
- Canvas - Faculty Center Grade Prep Tool and Final Grade Preparation [UW-Madison] doc is a great resource with screen captures and images that walks an instructor through the relevant information and steps in Canvas and includes some common issues to watch out for.
- Canvas - Considerations for Final Grading in the Canvas Gradebook [UW-Madison] doc can also be useful.
TRAD
TRAD is the developer group within Learning Solutions that created the Faculty Center Grade Prep tool in Canvas. If the tool is encountering bugs or issues we should email: kristy.bergeron@wisc.edu, stephanie.johnson@wisc.edu, doug.graham@wisc.edu, brian.ploeckelman@wisc.edu with questions over the final grading period. See more info below under Errors with Faculty Center Grade Prep tool.
Office of the Registrar
- Grading FAQs webpage
- Final and Midterm Grading page
- Support for final grading / Faculty Center: registrar@em.wisc.edu or call 608-262-3811
- For Faculty Center issues, contact egrade@em.wisc.edu or call 608-262-4859
Example Issues and Potential Solutions
Example Issue 1 - Final grades don’t match what I saw in Canvas
Issue
“My students are upset that their final grades don’t match what they saw in Canvas.” OR “My students grades in the final CSV don’t match up with what I see in the Canvas gradebook.”
You’re likely to see variations on this issue as it is responsible for the bulk of our final grading tickets. We have tried to address these in the main KB doc, but sometimes people skim and miss these points. There are two main causes and solutions to this issue:
Option 1: Instructors don’t set ungraded assignments to 0 (zero)
We’ve had instances where instructors do not mark unsubmitted or ungraded assignments as zero in the Canvas gradebook. Prior to Spring 2020, the gradebook had a function called "Tread Ungraded as 0". This was removed when the new Gradebook was implemented, so instructors should now set a default grade (see below) to replicate this function.
Solution: Instructors should change all ungraded assignments to 0 (zero). This can be done manually, going through each assignment, scanning up and down the gradebook. Or, instructors can use the “Set Default Grade” feature described in this document: How do I set a default grade for an assignment?. It is recommended that instructors save a backup of their Canvas gradebook before making bulk changes. As long as the ‘Overwrite already-entered grades’ box is not checked, no previously entered grades will be affected.
If an instructor has ungraded assignments, students often don’t think to check to see what their grade is when it includes ungraded assignments. By default, the grade they see only includes graded assignments. Students must uncheck the “Calculate based only on graded assignments” option in the Grades tool to see their grade with ungraded assignments counted as 0:
We’ve had instances where an instructor didn’t set ungraded assignments to zero and students thought they had an AB until the end of the semester. When the instructor finally changed ungraded assignments to zero at the very end of the semester and the student’s final grade changes to a C (or lower), students thought something was wrong, contacted the Help Desk, and were escalated to Learn@UW. We do not help with any grade dispute issues - those must be handled by the instructor. In this case, the instructor had to say something like “Sorry, I forgot to mark ungraded assignments as zero, and you didn’t check to see what your grade would be with ungraded assignments - you really got a C.”
Option 2: Instructors have failed to post changed grades on certain assignments
Canvas allows instructors to suppress the automatic posting of scores and score changes for each assignment. (This is often done to let the instructor release all the grades for an assignment at the same time.) If the instructor forgets to turn this feature off, there could be grades and score information in the gradebook that has not been broadcast out to the students. This can create a discrepancy in what the student sees in the Canvas gradebook and what the student receives on the last day of class.
Therefore, and grade changes. Graded, muted assignments are used in the calculation of students’ total grades in the instructor’s view of the gradebook. If any assignments are muted, the Grade Prep Tool will treat them as 0s and adjust every students grade accordingly. From the student’s point-of-view, their current total grade does not include a muted assignment. If an instructor uses the Faculty Center Grade Prep tool while an assignment is muted, they run the risk of submitting a final grade that is not the same as the total grade students see in Canvas.
Solution: Make sure instructors unmute any assignments before uploading the Faculty Center file into the Grade Prep Tool.
Example Issue 2 - Please help me with Faculty Center issues
Issue: “I’m having trouble doing X, Y, or Z with the Faculty Center, and I’m in a huge rush can you do this for me?”
Solution: Learn@UW staff do not have access to the Faculty Center. Functionally, we won’t be able to assist on most Faculty Center topics and ethically cannot submit grades for instructors. The best we can do is refer them to Registrar resources:
- Final and Midterm Grading webpage (Registrar)
- Direct them to the egrade@em.wisc.edu or call 608-262-4859
Example Issue 3 - Errors with Faculty Center Grade Prep tool
Issue: “I get an error when I click the “Process” button in step 4 of the Faculty Center Grade Prep Tool (In Canvas).”
Solution: There are a few steps to working through Faculty Center Grade Prep tool errors:
- First, if the instructor is willing, ask them what browser they are using and have them try it again. It is possible that minor brief outages may occur as systems get overtaxed. If they are not using Chrome or Firefox, suggest they use one of those browsers.
- If the error persists, error codes generated from the Faculty Grade Center Grade Prep tool should be sent to the CSI Tech Support channel in Teams.
- Email the instructor back to let them know you have escalated the issue. Also request that they send you the Faculty Center file they are using with the Grade Prep tool, if they are okay with it, as it will help with TRAD’s troubleshooting.
- Ask the faculty member if they are okay with you trying to duplicate the issue by running the Grade Prep tool with the file from the Faculty Center. If you’re able to duplicate the issue, this will help confirm there is an issue with one of the files or the tool, not their machine.
- Try running the import with a small segment of the CSV file for example just the first five or ten students to see if the issue might be with a specific student or role.
- If the course is reasonably small and there is a time constraint, you may suggest that the instructor manually enter grades in Faculty Center.
- If you were able to successfully run the file through the tool, suggest the instructor try using Faculty Center Grade Prep while in Incognito mode in Chrome or a private browser in Firefox to see if plugins are causing problems.
Example Issue 4 - Gradebook Export / Import Errors
Issue: “Canvas isn’t importing my CSV file into the gradebook, and I need to do that in order to get final grades.”
Solution: Instructors should refer to Instructure’s Guide on CSV export and upload/import. The general principle is that any imported CSV should be based on an initial exported CSV from the Canvas course.
Some options for troubleshooting this issue:
- Ask the instructor to share the CSV file they are using, if they are okay with it. Try running a CSV import on the Canvas Beta instance of the course since this will not affect actual student grades. This will verify if the CSV file is “good” or in the right format.
- In the case this is based on, the import worked on BETA but not PROD, but the test was still helpful in verifying the CSV file was in the correct format.
- In the case this is based on, the import worked on BETA but not PROD, but the test was still helpful in verifying the CSV file was in the correct format.
- Get permission from the instructor to create a test assignment and import a CSV file to it. Make sure you label it in a way to be as clear as possible that this is a test to reduce potential student confusion.
- If you are able to verify that the CSV is good and the import is not working for the course, the case should be escalated to Instructure.
- In the case this was based on, it was escalated to Instructure. Instructure indicated that the jobs server was “stuck”. Their engineering team had to clear it in order to re-enable CSV uploads for the course.
- This troubleshooting option will take a lot longer but can allow more extensive testing: Do a course export on PROD, import it to a blank shell course with test students, and run exports and imports. In this course this is based on this worked fine which helped to indicate that the issue was course specific.