Gradebook - How can the Canvas gradebook benefit you and your students?

We all use gradebooks. Some of us might have started teaching using an actual gradebook -- you remember those, don't you? Pieces of paper, bound together, where you would actually write down student grades and then use a calculator to figure out the final grades. Others might have started with spreadsheets like Excel where you had to manually set up the gradebook and figure out formulas so that final grades could be automatically calculated.

And now we have the next jump: the online gradebook. So, what's so spectacular about the Canvas gradebook? Why bother using it when you're perfectly happy with the gradebook you've been using for years? Below, I'm going to outline some of the special features of the Canvas gradebook but I want to start with the single most important reason you should be using the Canvas gradebook: because your students want it. That's right, students love being able to access their grades at anytime. It's hard to imagine but knowing their grades is actually really important to students.

Now that we've stated the obvious, here are a few of the other great features. This is by no means an exhaustive list, just a highlight of key features:

• Notify students who scored below a certain threshold or who did not submit a particular assignment. Links to an external site.
• Excuse a single student from an assignment. Links to an external site.
• Organize the gradebook by name, by total grade, by a specific assignment grade, etc. Links to an external site.
• Custom color code grades so you can quickly see late submissions, dropped grades, multiple submissions, etc. Links to an external site.
• Input grades for assignments that are not turned in via Canvas. Links to an external site.

Again, we're just scratching the proverbial surface here. You can go deep into the gradebook rabbit hole by searching gradebook in the Canvas Community Guide Links to an external site. as well as watching this fun little video from the good people at Instructure:

 

523 - Gradebook Overview Links to an external site. from Canvas LMS Links to an external site. on Vimeo Links to an external site..