People talking in a professional setting

CIDI Newsletter

2022 Newsletter - April

April 28, 2022

The CIDI monthly newsletter to USU instructors shares the latest news, teaching tips, and technology updates to help you succeed as a teacher.

Finalizing and Submitting Grades

Congratulations on reaching the finish of Spring 2022! Here are a few important tips to guide you as you prepare your final grades in Canvas and submit them to Banner.

If you post grades in Canvas:

Most important: The grade Canvas shows to students counts only the assignments they have received a grade for and only the grades that have been posted. Therefore:

  1. Check the Canvas Gradebook over and make sure you’ve accounted for every grade. Enter 0s if needs be for missing assignments. Do not leave blank Gradebook cells.
  2. Make sure no grades are hidden. Look for the slashed-eye icon at the top of each Canvas Gradebook column. If it appears, that means some grades are hidden from students. Click the three-dot menu in the column header and choose the option to Post Grades.
  3. Enable a course grading scheme. A course grading scheme in Canvas calculates a letter grade from the total score percentage. It is established in your course settings. For help, please see our tutorial on enabling your course grading scheme. 
  4. Check your Gradebook over carefully. For best results, export the Canvas Gradebook to a spreadsheet and make sure all of the total grade columns at the end match. Also make sure you are not providing any D- grades, which Banner won't accept.
  5. Use the Submit Grades to Banner tool. Follow these instructions for sending grades from Canvas to Banner.

Submitting Grades Manually in Banner

If you are not using Canvas to grade (or if grade submission from Canvas to Banner returns an error), you can submit your grades to Banner manually using the Banner grade submission instructions provided by the Registrar's office.

Other FAQs

  • When are grades due? Grades are due 96 hours after the final exam, not counting weekends.
  • When can students see grades in Banner after they are submitted? Grades recently submitted to Banner are "rolled to history" every day at around 5 pm. Once this occurs, the newly posted grades appear in Banner to students.
  • How are incomplete grades handled? Faculty allowing students to take an incomplete must submit the incomplete grade form. They do not submit a grade for the student until the student has completed the course.
  • For students receiving an "F," what's the last date of attendance? In a face-to-face class where attendance is taken, the last date of attendance would be the date the student last appeared in class. If this information is not available (and you use Canvas) you can go to the New Analytics tool in your course and use the last date of participation shown there.
  • How do you change grades once they are submitted? Submit a Change of Grade form to the registrar's office to change a posted grade.

As always, CIDI is available to help instructors and departments implement these techniques and more.

Teaching Summer? Check out our tutorial on copying content from one Canvas course to another.

Teaching Tools and Updates

Important Zoom Updates

The Zoom integration with Canvas is getting upgraded on Friday, May 6. The upgrade will improve the matching of Canvas user accounts with Zoom accounts. However, the upgrade will require teachers to re-enable the Zoom tool in each of their Canvas courses.

Additionally, for all users who are running the latest Zoom client, a new whiteboard feature is available.

Canvas Updates

  • Apply Score to Ungraded Assignments: In time for grading season, it is now possible to apply a "default score" to all assignments in the Gradebook at once. This is done in the column header options of the Total column using the option to "Apply Score to Ungraded."
  • Rich Text Editor Icon Maker: Place simple icons in your course text.
  • Course filter in New Quiz item banks: When you view item banks in New Quizzes, you can now filter them to only those associated with the course.

Upcoming Training Opportunities

Contact CIDI

For on-demand support with teaching technologies, contact CIDI at cidi@usu.edu, via chat, or at 435.797.9506. Schedule an appointment with an instructional designer to get help making your courses more engaging, usable, and accessible.