Use Grade Posting Policies in Canvas Gradebook

Last updated on February 3, 2022

Special Note: There is a known bug in New Quizzes where students can view comments left by the instructor in their submissions even when grades are hidden and the grade posting policy is set to manual.

The Canvas Gradebook is a powerful tool for recording and displaying student grades. When entering grades, you may want to hide the grades you’ve entered until you’re ready for students to see them. For example, you may be grading many assignments and don’t want grades to be visible until you’ve finished grading every students’ submission, or you may need to stop and come back in the middle of a long paper.

In these cases, you can use Grade Posting Policies to choose when students can see their grades. By default, the Automatic policy is selected, meaning students will see grades as soon as they’re entered into the Gradebook. This includes work that is fully or partially graded automatically, like multiple-choice quizzes.

Changing the Grade Posting Policy to manual, whether for the entire course or for individual assignments, will keep grades hidden until you choose to post them. When you hide the grades for a specific assignment in your gradebook, the students will not be able to see the grade in the gradebook or in the assignment itself

In this tutorial, we’ll cover how to change the default Grade Posting Policy, the Grade Posting Policy for individual assignments, and how to hide and post grades.

Directions

Change the Grade Posting Policy for a Single Assignment

1. Go to MSU Denver’s Faculty and Staff Hub.
2. Click Canvas in the Teaching & Learning section.
3. Log in to your Canvas Account.
4. Select the Course you’d like to work in.
5. Click Grades in the left-hand course navigation menu.
6. Hover your cursor over the name of an Assignment.
7. Click the More Options (3-Dots) icon to the right of the Assignment name.
8. Click Grade Posting Policy in the pop-up menu.
9. Click the circle next to either Automatic or Manual in the panel that opens to the right.
10. Click Save in the bottom right-hand corner of the panel.
    • You may need to scroll down to see the Save button.

Change the Grade Posting Policy for All Assignments

1. Click Grades in the left-hand course navigation menu.
2. Click the Gear icon in the top right-hand corner of the page.
3. Click the Grade Posting Policy tab along the top of the Gradebook Settings panel.
4. Click the circle next to either Automatic or Manual.
   • An Automatic policy will make the grades immediately visible to students the moment the grade is entered in the Gradebook or Speedgrader. You can still choose to hide grades after the fact, though, and choosing this option will not post grades that are currently hidden.
   • A Manual policy will hide grades that are entered until you choose to post them. Any grades that are already posted will remain visible until you hide them.
5. Click Apply Settings in the bottom right-hand corner of the page.

Hide and Post Grades for an Assignment

1. Click Grades in the left-hand course navigation menu.
2. Hover your cursor over the name of an Assignment.
   • If grades for this Assignment are hidden, a crossed-out eye icon will appear to the left of the Assignment name. If grades are posted, this eye icon will not be present.
3. Click the More Options (3-Dots) icon to the right of the Assignment name.
4. Click either Post Grades or Hide Grades.
   • If grades are already posted, the Post Grades button will be replaced by “All grades posted”, and vice versa if grades are already hidden.