Grade Posting Policy

Canvas is built to share information with students but sometimes you will want to control the sharing of grade information. You can set your gradebook posting policy to determine whether grades will be available to students immediately, student-by-student during the grading process or at the moment you manually post grades to all students.

Instructors can now control grade visibility (formerly known as “muting assignments”) by setting a course-wide grade posting policy for the gradebook or by setting posting policies on a per-assignment basis. Previously, instructors needed to hide the grades for each individual assignment and then release them to the students.

 

 

Automatically Post Grades

Canvas defaults to automatically posting grades. When you input a grade or comment in Speedgrader or the gradebook, that grade or comment is immediately released to the student. If you do not want the grade to be immediately available to students, you will need to turn on the Manual Grade Posting Policy.

Manually Post Grades

This setting allows you to complete your grading of an assignment (or allow all quiz submissions to be received), review the grades, and then post to all students when you are ready for the grades to be visible.

To enable the “Manually Post Grades” setting for a course’s gradebook (and thus for all assignments in the gradebook), follow these steps:

1. In your Canvas course site, click Grades in the left course navigation menu.
2. Click the gear icon in the upper right.
3. Click the Grade Posting Policy tab in the pop-up window.
4. Select Manually Post Grades.
5. Click the blue Update button.

All grades will now be hidden from students until they are manually posted. See "Post Grades for an Individual Assignment" below for instructions on how to release grades.

A walk-through tour of setting your course's grade posting policy are in the video above.

When you are ready to post the grades, follow these steps: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-post-grades-for-an-assignment-in-the-Gradebook/ta-p/576 Links to an external site.

Setting an Individual Assignment to Manual Posting Policy

Instructors have the option to hide grading information for specific assignments rather than for the entire gradebook. To set an individual assignment to a manual posting policy:

1. Hover over an assignment's name and click on the three-dot icon that appears.
2. Select Grade Posting Policy from the drop-down menu.
3. Choose Manually to hide grades by default for the individual assignment.
4. Click the blue Save button.

Grade Visibility Icon

Once the Manually Post Grades setting has been applied, the assignment (or all assignments if you applied a course wide setting) will include the word MANUAL below the assignment name:

Once you begin entering grades, an eye icon will appear, indicating there are grades that students can’t see. 

Once you post grades for an assignment (see "Post Grades for an Individual Assignment" below), the eye icon will no longer be displayed. 

Post Grades for an Individual Assignment

When instructors are finished grading an assignment, they can release the grades to students. To post an assignment’s grades: 

1. Hover over an assignment's name and click on the three-dot icon that appears.
2. Select Post Grades from the drop-down menu.
3. Choose whether to post the grades for Everyone or only the students currently Graded.
4. Click the blue Post button.

 

Hide Grades

With either the Automatic or Manual Posting policy, you can still hide grades for an individual assignment. The is most useful if you have made a mistake and need to go back and rework the posted grades, or released the grades earlier than intended.

Click on the three dots menu in the upper right hand corner of any assignment and select Hide Grades from the drop down. Once you are ready to release the grades to your students, use the same steps outlined in the  "Post Grades for an Individual Assignment" section above.  

Manage Your Gradebook

Grade Posting Policy
Grade Detail Tray & SpeedGrader Access
Late & Missing Work