When extenuating circumstance cause students to miss assessments, instructors using Canvas have a couple of options available to adjust the grade calculations.

Excluding Grades from Calculation

The best and recommended method is to excuse the grade from the course total calculation in the gradebook. Excluding a grade item automatically refactors and calculates the final grade based on the weights of the existing grade items. This is the simplest method

Keeping the same weights, the final grade is refactored over the new denominators. As a simplified example:

• (Normal list of grade items) 2/3, 2/2, 5/10 → 9/15 (final grade)
• (Excluding the first item above) 2/2, 5/10 → 7/12 (adjusted final grade)

This can be done from either the Gradebook or the SpeedGrader™ using the instructions in Canvas documentation: How do I change the status of an existing submission in the Gradebook?

Shifting Grade Item Weights

When calculations were made on paper for each student, it was simplest to reassign the weight of an item for a particular student by increasing the weight of one of the other assessment items and computing that student's score. Just as in eClass, there is no simple method to do this in the Canvas gradebook. so instructors may elect to do just this using a spreadsheet and then overriding that student's course total.

If instructors still want to shift the weight of a grade item into another within the Canvas gradebook, this would involve several steps using the following example (which is why the above method to excuse grades and re-distribute the score equally among other assessment items as described above is recommended.)

Scenario

A course has three graded items in 3 weighted assignment groups:

• Assigner A (10%)
• Assigner B (10%)
• Quizzer A (80%)

A student missed Assigner A and is allowed to have the weight deferred into Assigner B to count for 20% for their grade total calculation.

Setup steps:

1. Duplicate Assigner B, creating Assigner B Copy.
   
2. Create a new Assignment Group, Assignments 2 (exception) and move Assigner B Copy into it; this needs to be done so that a weight can be assigned to it.
   
3. Excuse the grade for Assigner A and the original Assigner B for the particular student. (Note: Before you can excuse grades, the graded activity must be Published.)
   

Additional steps (in any order):

• Assign the Assigner B Copy only to the individual student. Not only does this ensure access to the student, it will prevent the rest of the class from accessing it. The student should be instructed to submit through Assigner B Copy and not the original Assigner B; they should be prevented from submitting into the original assignment as long as their grade is already excused there).
• Edit the Assignments 2 (exception) Assignment Group's weight to 20%. The course total weightings at the bottom should now read 120% instead of 100% - as noted in the previous step, the calculations are exclusive to those assigned to their respective assignment in Canvas and there is no need for concern for the overage.
  

The grade entered into the student's Assigner B Copy column calculate their final grade total properly with the weight shifted from the first assignment into the second.