Friday 25^th July saw members from the Learning and Teaching stream of ITS come and chat to us about how to set up assignments and the Markbook in Canvas. Canvas offers a powerful suite of tools for managing assessments, but navigating its settings—especially the Markbook—can be tricky. The session walked us through some key features and best practices to help you streamline your grading process and avoid common pitfalls. The recording of the session is available below, but here are a few pointers we picked up along the way…

🔧 Initial Steps

You can set up your assignment settings first, and then add in the assessment. Or you can design the assessment and settings together. Either works and is up to your individual preferences.

Before diving into grading, please ensure that the Grade Release setting is manual. This gives you control over when students see their marks—at a pre-determined time, rather than as you mark.

Any unpublished assignments won’t be visible to students. They will see that there is an assessment, but not the details.

📚 Use the Assignments Module as a Central Hub

The Assignments module in your Canvas course template is more than just a list of tasks—it’s your assessment hub. This provides a great ‘one stop shop’ for students and their assessments. It doesn’t need to just contain the assessments, but other useful information with regards to assessment.

• Include all assessments here for clarity and consistency.
• Add helpful resources like referencing guides, group work rules, or submission instructions to support students in one central location.

⚖️ Understand Weighting and Points

When setting up individual pieces of assessment, Canvas defaults to using points to calculate grades, but you can override this with assignment‑group weighting:

• If group weighting is off, ensure the points reflect the intended weight of each task.
• If group weighting is on, you can set all tasks to the same point value (e.g., 100) and let the group weights do the work.
• Be aware: Canvas allows total weights to be less than or greater than 100%, especially if the same assignment is used across multiple cohorts.

• If you have weekly quizzes, each marked out of 10 and collectively worth 20%:
  • Set points = 10 for each quiz.
  • Set the assignment group weight = 20%.
• If assessments have different point values (e.g., paper out of 80, presentation out of 20), Canvas will weight them proportionally based on points unless you adjust group weights.

Troubleshooting Tip: If weights don’t display correctly after enabling group weighting, try refreshing the page.

🧮 Handling Multiple Assessments and “Best Of” Rules

Canvas supports flexible grading rules, but with limitations:

• To implement a “best of” rule (e.g., best 4 of 5 quizzes), you’ll need to drop the lowest—Canvas doesn’t support “keep highest” directly.
• These rules can be adjusted mid‑semester, offering flexibility if something needs to change or an error is detected (just remember, if you’re changing your assessment from that published in the Class Summary you will need to seek ADE approval).

👥 Managing Cohorts and Group Work

If multiple cohorts are within your Canvas site (e.g. co‑teaching arrangements), you can/should be setting up different assessment items for each cohort or ‘section’ in Canvas.

• If the cohort assessments have the same weighting (i.e. both cohorts have a quiz, with different questions, but the assessment is worth 30% for both), you can use a single assignment group.
• If weightings differ, create separate assignment groups for each cohort’s piece of assessment.
• When marking group projects:
  • Start by assigning the same grade to all group members.
  • Then enable “Assign Grades Individually” to adjust marks for each student as needed.
• Canvas offers a basic peer‑review tool, but it’s limited in functionality. For more sophisticated peer assessment, consider using the quiz function or custom‑built solutions.

⏰ Late Penalties and Availability Settings

Canvas includes a late‑penalty feature, but it’s based on calendar days, not working days (which ANU policy is based on)—so it’s turned off.

• Use Available From to control when students can view the assignment.
• Use Until to set the submission deadline. This can be left blank or align with your return date.
• If a student is granted an extension, Canvas will override the “Until” date for that individual.

📝 Paper Based Exams

Paper based exams can be added as an assessment item in Canvas. The process for uploading grades is similar to that in Wattle – export the grade sheet from Canvas, populate and import back in.

Remember to keep the format of the exported file the same for importing!

Final Thoughts

Canvas is a robust platform, but it requires thoughtful setup to align with your teaching goals. By understanding how the Markbook, assignment groups, and grading rules interact, you can create a transparent and fair assessment experience for your students.

If you have any further questions regarding setting up your Markbook and assignments and quizzes in Canvas, please reach out to edtech.cbe@anu.edu.au or the ITS team.