Canvas: Convert hyphens in grade book to zeroes or excused prior to import into student information system

In my ethnobotany class I have assignments such as in-class presentations that are not submitted in Canvas. For these assignments I manually enter the student's score. For these items there is a difference between a non-entry, a null entry, and an excused absence in the values shown in the MyShark import, a difference that is not directly visible in the grade book in Canvas. 

First a couple of Canvas definitions.

In Canvas the Current Score is what is displayed in the Canvas grade book as the student's current overall grade. In the grade book where there is a hyphen for an assignment grade, that assignment is not counted against the student for purposes of calculating the Current Score. The Current score is calculating the total points earned to date by the student divided by the total possible to date for those same assignments. Assignments which do not have a score entered do not count against the student. This is as it should be, the grade book is showing the current standing of the student to date.

In Canvas the Final Score is not displayed in the grade book but can be seen if one exports the entire grade book and then opens the export file with spreadsheet software. The Final Score is calculating the total points earned to date divided by the total points for all of the assignments through to the end of the term. In this sense the Final Score presumes that all assignments will eventually be counted in the total possible.

In the above image there is a hyphen in the second column, third row. As a result assignment 010 does not count against the student in the Current Score. Note that 010 is a "No Submission" assignment in Canvas. That assignment occurs outside of Canvas and I then manually enter a score. In this case the student had not submitted the assignment. That assignment, however, does count against the student in the Final Score because the Final Score includes the 5 points for that assignment in the total possible. In other words, the Final Score presumes that this missing mark will eventually count against the student.

Suppose, however, I do not intend for the non-submission to count against the student, if, for example, the assignment is optional. If I leave things as they are above, then I will see a different score in Canvas (the Current Score) than I see in MyShark (the Final Score) with the Current Score being higher than the Final Score.

Hyphens are making the differences seen in the export file screenshot above between the Current Score and Final Score columns. The 96.71 Current Score is an A, but on import the score will show in the student information system as 89.35 for a grade of B.

If I want that 010 assignment to be optional, to not count against the student, then I have to replace the hyphens with "ex" which will set the grade to Excused. If I want this assignment to count against the student, then I should be explicit and enter a zero for that assignment. One can see an Excused assignment at the bottom of the third column of the earlier screenshot.

In the image above the hyphen has been replaced with an Excused.

Long story short is that if you have hyphens in your grade book, then the score you see in Canvas will not be the same as the score you see in the student information system. Be explicit: replace hyphens with either "ex" so they do not count against the student, or zero if the assignment does count against the student. 

If there is an automatically applied grade for missing submissions, a third option is to mark the assignment "mi" which will trigger the mission submission score. 

I tend encounter the hyphen issue only with my No Submission assignments that are manually graded because of the automatic zero assigned to missing assignments for assignments submitted Online. No Submission assignments where marks are manually entered do not get zeroes automatically applied after the due date. I do not know why these are exempt from this rule, but they are.

By the way, one might wonder why the Grade for missing submissions is a setting that can be non-zero. Some school districts elsewhere award 50% for a missing assignment, they allow no grade lower than 50%.

The above hyphen issue will likely also affect those using other submission types if hyphens are present in your grade book at the end of the term.