Nulls in Canvas grade book and their impact on SIS imports from final score column


Blank values in a Canvas grade book are not counted against a student in the score displayed in Canvas but may be counted against the student on import into a Student Information System.


For assignments with no submission or submitted on paper, grades are entered manually by the instructor. If the instructor chooses not to enter a value and leaves the cell blank, this null value counts as a zero in the Final Score but not in the Current Score.



While Canvas displays the Current Score in the grade book, some Student Information Systems import the Final Score. If there are null values in a student's grade record, then the Current Score displayed in Canvas will be higher than the Final Score imported into the SIS.


Although the difference may be small, if the difference crosses a grade boundary then the Current Grade displayed in Canvas will not be the same as the Final Grade imported into the SIS. As of this writing, the Canvas grade book is displaying the Current Score, in this instance a 92.73%. The SIS import, however, will import the Final Score, 91.45%. The grade in this instance is the same, an A. That difference is because the Current Score is not counting points for the null assignment in the total possible points for the student, the Final Score includes the points for assignments, null or not, in the total possible points for the student. This behavior may be different for other SIS systems.


If one sets null values to Excused then the Current Score and Final Score are the same. 


If there are no nulls in the grade book, then there will be no difference in these scores. This suggests of best practice of not leaving any null values in the grade book.


Canvas has a side panel that can be accessed when entering grade in the grade book by clicking on the icon that appears when one places the cursor in a cell of the grade book. 

The above is the panel without the enhanced grade book filters enabled. With those filter enabled there are a few more statuses available. To clear a status, select None.

The letters "ex" can also be entered directly into a grade book cell to enter an Excused mark. This is faster than accessing the side panel. There is also a comment box in the above panel where a note can be made on the nature of the excuse. Note that students can see comments made in the grade book comment box. For more details  refer to the Canvas grade book guide. 



To see student responses to comments in assignments or the grade book, access Canvas on a desktop or laptop, go to the Inbox, and select "Submission comments" from the dropdown menu.

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