FIU Online’s monthly Faculty Webinar series explores relevant instructional strategies and effective ways to use technology in an online classroom. The third webinar in the series titled “Grading Made Easy” provided faculty with helpful tips on grading within Canvas, as well as submitting final grades to Panthersoft.
Instant Replay: Grading Made Easy
Presenters Maikel Alendy and Aisha Hamid from FIU Online showcased some of Canvas’ most useful grading features. If you missed this webinar, you can view the recording or read some of the key takeaways below.
Weighing assignments
Things to keep in mind when determining weights for assignments.
- Proportional distribution: give students the opportunity to master a course in various ways. (Ex: Avoid weighing a single assignment as 80% of a student’s final grade)
- Manageable points: distribute points as whole numbers to avoid any confusion.
- Intentional weighing: provide students multiple assignments and activities with varying weights to allow them more opportunities to master particular concepts within your course.
Pro Tip: Using assignment groups within Canvas allows you to better organize the assignments within your course. Creating groups for each assignment type (ex: Journals, Discussions, Quizzes) allows you to more easily assign weights within Canvas.
Grading schemes
Grading schemes use a set of criteria to measure varying levels of achievement within a course. Additionally, some things to keep in mind when customizing grading schemes within Canvas:
- Grading schemes within Canvas by default are not turned on
- Rounding must be included within your scheme
- You are able to customize your grading scheme at any time
- Ensure your grading scheme is enabled before the start of the course
Rounding up within a grading scheme “prevents me from getting quite a bit of emails from students” requesting bumps in their grades. -Maikel Alendy
Canvas gradebook features
Using your Canvas gradebook is important because it provides the university pertinent student success outcomes and data. Some of the Canvas gradebook features highlighted within the webinar included:
- How to find and use your totals column
- Treating ungraded assignments as zeros
- Messaging students who… (certain scores, have not submitted, etc)
- Assigning extra credit in a course
“I think if I give my students the opportunity to do some truly impactful additional work, it is beneficial to both my field and they should be rewarded for that.”- Maikel Alendy
Importing Final Grades into PantherSoft
It is important to note that instructional designers do not have access to upload final grades into PantherSoft. The MyFIU Grade import guide provides a helpful step by step guide on how to import grades into PantherSoft. If you are having any issues with importing your final grades, reach out to your department, as they will be your best resource.
Future Faculty Webinars
Be on the lookout for FIU Online’s future webinars on instructional strategies and effective ways to use technology in your online classroom. If you have any ideas for future webinar topics, we’d love to hear them. Contact Christina Schettini (cschetti@fiu.edu) to share your ideas for future webinar topics.
Read our other faculty webinar instant replay articles: