Canvas Quick Guide - End of Semester Checklist
Using this checklist, you will walk through completing important end-of-semester steps. These include grading, handling incompletes, and maintaining your records.
These checklists are created by the Training Services Department at Instructure. They are based on the collective experiences of the team members in education and their deep knowledge of Canvas. The Beginning-of-Course Checklist is a starting point for ensuring your course is ready to go for student access at the start of a new course term. The End-of-Course Checklist is helpful to review when you are nearing the end of your course term.
You may have used the Canvas grade book for calculations, but final grades need to be submitted in your HSU Faculty Center. For more information on Grading at HSU, please refer to the Registrar's Grading Information page.
If you are grading in Canvas, please take a look at the Canvas GradeBook Quick Guide and the reminders below.
Don't forget to double check your grades ensuring they are complete for each student within the gradebook.
- Reminder #1: It is a good idea to alert your students of your grading schedule, up to the final submission.
- Reminder #2: Make sure assignments don't go ungraded! If an instructor fails to record a “0” grade for a student who does not submit a required assignment, the Canvas gradebook will not calculate the assignment into the final grade; therefore, the missed assignment will not count against the student. If you want to “set it and forget it,” you can set a default grade for individual assignments in your grade book; thus, no assignment will go ungraded.
IMPORTANT: Setting a default grade for an assignment and "Treating ungraded as 0" are NOT the same. Treating ungraded as 0 is for the instructor's view only and will not affect grade calculation.
- Reminder #3: To create weighted grading categories follow this guide on weighting a final grade based on Assignment Groups.
- Reminder #4: Download an .xls file of the gradebook, for your records.
TIP! When you download your scores into your Excel spreadsheet, you will see a "Current Score" and a "Final Score" column. Depending on how you have entered your scores, the grades in these two columns may not match. This is NOT a miscalculation by Canvas. It simply indicates that the system does not calculate unsubmitted assignments as "0" grades in the "Current Score" column, but it does calculate unsubmitted assignments as "0" grades in the "Final Score" column. Therefore, if the numbers in these columns do not match, you will need to return to any assignments that you have yet to enter grades for. Why is this necessary? Please see Reminder #2.
Please review the information on Handling Incompletes in Canvas.
If you have a student who will be assigned an Incomplete for your course, please submit a ticket to [email protected] with the following: course name, CRN, student name, and desired end date for the incomplete work. The LMS Support Team will verify the incomplete with the Registrar’s Office and set-up an Incomplete “section” in your course for the student(s) to finish the course during the next academic year.
There is nothing that you need to do to conclude your Canvas course. Three weeks after grades are due, your Canvas course will be automatically ‘locked’ into a read-only state and placed on your students’ “Past Enrollments” list, where they will continue to have read-only access to it (can download documents but will not be able to submit any assignments or interact with activities). Consider the content available to them. For example, you may want to disable the option of “Show the Correct Answers” in the settings for any quizzes/exams. By default, students will have read-only access for five years after the end of the course. If you want to restrict access to your course so that students cannot access any materials, you will need to restrict student access to a course.
If your Canvas Dashboard has become a bit full, you can customize what courses appear in this view.
Check out this Canvas guide: "How do I customize my Courses list as an instructor?"
- CTL Virtual Office Hours - Canvas Support will be available by appointment Monday-Friday, 9-4. Schedule an appointment for 1-1 support.
- Course enrollment questions and support for External Apps (Turnitin, Zoom, Clickers) can be directed to Canvas Support @HSU: [email protected].