The Gradebook stores all information about student progress in the course, measuring both letter grades and course outcomes. This video provides a basic overview:

Assignments and Grades

The Canvas Gradebook is closely tied to the Assignments index. Anything you want a Gradebook column for must have an Assignment associated with it. By default, assignments appear in the order you create them. This also determines their order in the Gradebook, but you can drag and drop them into the order you want.

To create weighted grades or set specific rules for groups of assignments (such as dropping the lowest score), create Assignment Groups on the Assignments page, not within the Gradebook.

Using SpeedGrader

SpeedGrader is the Canvas tool for viewing student assessment submissions and giving feedback. Using SpeedGrader should help cut down on the time you spend grading, and make grading easier. A video overview of SpeedGrader (3:06) is also available.

You can use SpeedGrader to:

  • Read written submissions in the DocViewer and use the annotation tools to give feedback within the document.
  • Give feedback comments — written, multimedia, or as a file attachment — on the student’s work as a whole.
  • Give a score.
  • Use a rubric to assign points and add comments. If you use the rubric for grading, the rubric score will transfer to the student’s grade for the assignment.
  • View individual student responses to quizzes as well as logs of each student’s quiz attempts.

Accessing SpeedGrader

You can access SpeedGrader either directly from the assignment or through the Gradebook.

Adapted from “Grading in Canvas” in Start Here 102: Best Practices in Online instruction, licensed CC BY 4.0 by Grace Seo, University of Missouri.

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