missing assignment report in canvas

Get a List of All Students and Missing Work from Canvas

Published: 2020-05-18 9:16 AM |

Category: Code | Tags: canvas , canvas api , canvas lms , code , programming , python

In a Canvas course, you can quickly check the number of missing assignments for single students relatively quickly. You can also message groups of students missing specific assignments from the analytics page (or the gradebook). What you can't do is get a list of all students in a course and their missing assignments in a CSV for quick analysis.

In my never ending exploration of the Canvas API, I've got a Python script that creates a missing assignments report for a course, broken down by section.

I have my own specific thoughts about using the "missing" flag to communicate with students about work. The bigger picture is that while we're distance learning, it's helpful to be able to get a birds-eye view of the entire course in terms of assignment submission. We also have enlisted building principals to help check in on progress and having this report available is helpful for their lookup purposes.

What it does

The script uses UCF's canvasapi library to handle all of the endpoints. Make sure to pip install before you try to run the script. The Canvas object makes it easy to pass course and section references around for processing.

Because each student has to be individualy looked up, it uses multiple threads to speed it up. There isn't much compute, just API calls and data wrangling, so multithreading worked better than multiprocessing.

For each section, the script calls for each students' submissions, looking for workflow_state="unsubmitted" specifically to handle filtering on the Canvas servers.

From this filtered list, it creates a final list by checking the submission history and any excused flags. A list is then returned to the main worker and the section is written as a whole to keep the processes thread-safe.

When the script is finished, you'll have a CSV report on your filesystem (in the same directory as the script itself) that you can use.

Improvements

Currently, missing assigments are joined as a single string in the final cell, so those could be broken out into individual columns. I found that the resulting sheet is nicer when the number of columns is consistent, but there could be some additional processing added to sort assignments by name to keep order similar.

Canvas is also implementing GraphQL endpoints so you can request specific bits of data. The REST endpoints are hepful, but you get a lot of data back. Cleaning up the number of bytes of return data will also help it run faster.

Thank you kindly for your post. This helps tremendously to see how my 5th and 4th graders are doing in all their subjects.

Comments are always open. You can get in touch by sending me an email at [email protected]

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Setting Automatic Grades for Missing Assignments in Canvas

If a student has not submitted an assignment and the due date has passed, you can either enter a zero in the Canvas Gradebook manually or you can have Canvas automatically assign a zero using a Missing Submission Policy.

It is important that every item in the Canvas Gradebook has a number or a value. If you do not enter a grade for an assignment, Canvas will ignore the assignment in their final grade calculation, resulting in an inaccurate, possibly inflated score. It is also important to enter any zeros immediately after the due date passes rather than at the end of the semester so that students’ grades are an accurate reflection of their current standing.

To use the Missing Submission Policy feature :

• Open your Canvas course and select Grades in the left-hand navigation.
• Click on the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of the Gradebook. The Late Policies tab will now appear.
• Select “Automatically apply grade for missing submissions” and enter 0 in the field below.

Canvas will now automatically insert a zero into any missing assignment cell after a due date has passed. You can always override this score if you choose to accept a student’s assignment after the due date.

Setting a Missing Submission policy affects all assignments in a course, including assignments with due dates in the past. To exclude a specific assignment, mark the submission as something other than Missing in the Grade Detail Tray. Applying a missing submission policy will not affect previously graded missing submissions. See  How do I apply a Missing Submission policy in the Gradebook?  for more information.

Note that you can also use this feature to automatically apply deductions to late submissions.  See  How do I apply a Late Submission policy in the Gradebook?  for more information.

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Automatically score missing assignments in canvas.

If you have a lot of students in your class, it can be a pain to put in a grade for missing assignments that are past due. A new feature in Canvas will do it for you, automatically!

Click on the Grades link on the left-hand navigation. Then, click on the gear icon

A new window opens and provides an option for setting the Late Policies

Click on the check box next to Automatically apply grade for missing submissions

Type a zero (0), or the desired number of points for a missing submission, in the Grade percentage for missing submissions box

Click the Update button

This feature applies to any currently missing assignments that are:

• past the due date, AND
• set-up for online submission

See the Canvas guide on Missing Submission policy for more information.

Canvas - Total Grade Calculation with Missing Assignments

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How Canvas Calculates Total Grades

• Student View When a Student looks at their final grade, the blank item will not be included in the calculation, and the assignment counts neither for nor against their score appearing as if it has been Excused .  This means that if the blank item is meant to be a 0, the Student will see an artificially inflated grade.  A Student who notices this is able to use the “What-If” feature  to see what their grade should actually be, this but requires the student to notice the discrepancy and take steps to check the difference.
• Teacher View Typically, the Teacher view is the same as the Student view for the Total grade; however, there is a setting available only to Teachers that will show the Total grade as if 0’s had been entered.  From Instructure’s documentation we can see that “Treat Ungraded as 0 is a visual change and does not affect any grades”.  What this means, is that the Students’ views are unchanged, and they will still see the artificially inflated grade .

If you choose to utilize SIS Sync, the process will treat blanks scores as 0.  This means that the Student view and the grade submitted via SIS Sync are different if you have any ungraded items in your gradebook.  If you intend for any items to be Excused you will need to mark them as such before starting the SIS Sync process.

Best Practices for Handling Missing Assignments

• Set Default Grade to 0 on Assignments Zeros need to be entered regularly for students to see a true reflection of their grade.  The fastest way to do this is to use Set Default Grade for an item . 
• Mark Excused Items In the case where a student will be Excused from an assignment, their grade should be marked as excused.  The fastest way to excuse a student from an assignment is by entering EX  into the grade input field.
• Late Policy - Automatically Apply Grade for Missing Submissions The Late Policies area can enable Canvas to enter some 0’s on the Teachers behalf.  The Late policy will only work with assignments that require a submission.  This means that any in-class assignments, attendance grades, on paper submissions, live presentations, etc will NOT have the 0 entered automatically, even with this setting turned on. See How do I apply a Missing Submission policy in the New Gradebook .

Verifying Total Grade

• Load the Grades area in your course.
• Click on Actions
• Select Export . 

Common Issues

"Ungraded" icon still appearing on item with grade

• Open SpeedGrader
• Scroll to the bottom of the submission
• Click Update Scores
• Move to the next student, and repeat the steps for the entire class

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Articles in this section

Messaging students who haven't submitted an assignment.

• Download a list of student email addresses in Canvas
• Communicating with students using Canvas
• Receiving a copy of Announcements and Inbox messages you send
• Using Zoom with Canvas

• November 14, 2023 21:26

You can use the Grades in Canvas to message students who fit specific assignment criteria, such as missing assignment submissions, ungraded assignments, or scoring above or below a specified point threshold.

To message students who haven’t yet made a submission to an assignment

1. Log in to Canvas .

2. Navigate to your course in Canvas.

3. On the left, from the course navigation menu, select Grades .

4. Hover your cursor over the assignment column header and select the vertical three-dot Options button.

5. The Compose Message box will appear. In the For students who... drop-down menu, select the “ Have not yet submitted ” option.

Note:  You can select the “ Show all recipients ” link to view and select or unselect specific recipients.

6. Enter the Subject and Message . You can add file attachments by selecting the paperclip button or add audio or video comments by selecting the media button.

7. Select Send . Students will receive the message to their SF State email address.

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Anyone familiar with canvas? Why does it say “not submitted” at the top but it’s graded and all this was Feb 10th too. Thanks it’s an online class

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Is it true that we cannot get grades from a concluded enrollment via the Canvas API?

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Solved! Go to Solution.

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Canvas enrollments, concluded enrollments.

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