Turn on "View Grade History" for Large Classes

Eric Pasion suggested this on November 07, 2012 10:52 We need a way to easily track and report when any grade is changed in a class. Currently, the Grade History page is disabled once you get around 150 students, which is a fairly normal grade size at our institution. 45 people like this - Me too!

Comments

Christopher Higgins University of Maryland May 03, 2013 08:52 We got the error at 113 students. This is tremendously important for large classes with hundreds of students and potentially 10-20 TAs.

 gradebook history not available.png (quick view)

JAMES W BUHLER May 14, 2013 16:52 I got the error for a course under 90 students. Grade history is an absolutely crucial function, especially given how easily one can inadvertently change grades in the Canvas gradebook. For me it is a deal killer and I will recommend that our university not use Canvas for any course larger than the gradebook can support the grade history.

Paul Haynos University of Maryland May 22, 2013 05:43 I was unable to view grade history for a course (3 sections) with 65 students.

Mary Maxson University of Maryland October 15, 2013 12:42 This is critical for our college. We have many courses with hundreds of students and multiple TAs. How else is an Instructor supposed to monitor which TA did what in their gradebook? The large classes need it most! The absence of the ability to do this has discouraged at least one faculty member here with multiple TAs from using the Canvas gradebook. Also - it appears to affect smaller classes too - the cap is based on the total number of student submissions rather than the class size. When that hits 2000 total submissions this error appears. This punishes those who use the system most. MIHRAN A AROIAN October 31, 2013 17:50 UT Austin - Main Campus Grade history for large classes is a MUST have, not a nice to have feature. Last year, a student was expelled for changing grades in the LMS. Without a grade history, there would have been no way to track the changes he had made.

Kimberly Fields November 12, 2013 08:59 University of South Florida I had a TA type exam 3 grade in exam 2 spot. It is a large lecture (200) so there is no history of what the student's grade was previously. The student says they can't find their old exam. If we were still using Blackboard, this wouldn't be a problem. I can't believe there isn't a way to see grade history in large classes! Of course, I didn't realize we couldn't see the history until I was in a situation where I needed to see it. This is more than just inconvenient as I will have to have handwritten copies of grades and download grades several times throughout the term to avoid at least some of the trouble with not having this feature. With a large group of TAs that all need to access the gradebook to upload grades, that is scary to hope that no one goes in and even accidentally tinkers with grades and I am also concerned that there is no icon that shows the grade has been altered. This is NOT ok!

Paul H. White UEN::UofU December 17, 2013 07:03 I, too, need to have this feature for a number of courses. In addition, it would be good to have the grade history go back 4-5 revisions for a score.

Instructor Mills Auburn University January 14, 2014 16:48 I had this happen in a class of 3 merged sections for a total of 57 students. The structure of my laboratory class is quite complex. I didn't know I could download a file and calculate in Excel until almost the end of the semester. This was after playing around with grades that I thought students could not see due to having the 'Grades' tab greyed out. I was trying to force a correct grade (yes, I realize that not wise now, but was desperate to submit final grades). Obviously this is my significant first experience with Canvas. I was able to get historical grades fine for a while, then when I went back a final time to correct hand-entered scores and calculated final grades I got the 'class too large' message and have spent part a couple weeks trying to sort things out.

Disappointing. I thought Canvas would be a good way to handle a large class load- put a lot of multimedia up, and tried to use Speedgrader tools to grade large technical reports with mixed results due to Flash issues in Apple and PC, both. Chemical Engineering students did not respond well to it, did not view research articles; borderline cheated on 'pre-lab' quizzes based on a summer of making video, and were not prepared. Now they are up in arms despite sub-par performance What a nightmare of a semester.

Rob Ditto Wharton March 01, 2014 15:34 Data is now available through the new-ish Gradebook History API even when the limit of Grade Book changes has been exceeded. Here's hoping this will lead to an improvement in the Grade Book history feature.

Note that the update of Gradebook History API is only available in the Beta Version of CANVAS and is not currently available as of April 4th 2014.