{"id":208,"date":"2016-12-07T18:13:07","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T18:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/canvas.lauragibbs.net\/wpblog\/?p=208"},"modified":"2016-12-07T18:15:20","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T18:15:20","slug":"the-tyranny-of-the-percentage-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canvas.lauragibbs.net\/wpblog\/grading\/the-tyranny-of-the-percentage-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tyranny of the Percentage: Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, I’m still kind of in shock at this nothing-but-numbers approach to grading in Canvas (see yesterday’s post<\/strong><\/a>). To make sure I understand things correctly I re-read this archived\/failed feature request:\u00a0Allow Grading Schemes where Range is based on points not percentage<\/strong><\/a>. The commenters note that this problem is part of a more general failure in Canvas: the lack of variability in setting grading schemes. That conversation led me to another archived\/failed request:\u00a0Can’t a letter grade just be a letter grade?<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>And as I follow this White Rabbit through the various twists and turns, I see that this is a long-standing \u2014 very long-standing \u2014 problem with\u00a0Canvas.<\/p>\n

The conversation at\u00a0Can’t a letter grade just be a letter grade?<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0expresses many of my same concerns about the tyranny of percentages and number-grading only: even if you set up a scheme that assigns letters, “you cannot hide the number grade” as one commenter points out, and this concern was echoed by others.<\/p>\n

As for it being a long-standing problem, consider this comment: “Consistently since 2011, our faculty have been seeking a way to decouple letter grades from Grading Schemes and to import certain grades via .CSV only as letter grades.” That commenter provides links to a half-dozen previous attempts to request that Canvas do something about this; they go back to a previous community forum that Canvas ran in the past, so unfortunately those conversations have been lost, but you can get a sense of what they were like from the titles:<\/p>\n