Once you have added assignments to your assignment group, you can create rules for the entire assignment group. Assignment group rules determine how Canvas handles any exceptions you want to create for grade calculations. Assignment groups can be weighted or unweighted.

When using the lowest or highest score rule, an assignment group must include at least one score, plus the number of dropped scores and the number of assignments that should not be dropped. For instance, if you have a rule for dropping three scores and one Never Drop assignment, you would need five student scores in the assignment group to have all three lowest or highest scores dropped.

Canvas considers how the rule most negatively or positively affects the student's overall score. A rule to drop the lowest score will remove the assignment score(s) from a student's group percentage calculation that will result in the best possible score for that group. A rule to drop the highest score will remove the assignment score(s) from a student's group percentage calculation that will result in the lowest possible score for that group.

In some cases, the point value may be considered more important than percentage score when determining which assignment to drop. For example, an instructor may set a rule to drop the lowest score in an assignment group, where a student earns a 100% on a 50-point assignment, 65% on a 100-point assignment, and 50% on a 24-point assignment. The 50% score is the lowest percentage, but the 65% score will be dropped as this action provides the student with a better total score for the assignment group than dropping the 50% score.

Multiple Grading Periods

If your course includes Multiple Grading Periods, you cannot change assignment group rules once an assignment group has assignments in a closed grading period.

Additionally, if an assignment group contains assignments that fall into multiple grading periods, grades may have unintended consequences when calculating assignment group rules.

If your institution is using a student information system (SIS) for grading purposes, you can set up an assignment to be sent back to the SIS. However, you must first specify which assignment(s) in the course should be sent to your SIS as part of the grade publishing process. Each assignment must be modified individually. However, your institution may have already enabled an option for all assignments to be configured for your SIS.

Once a graded assignment is set up to be sent to your SIS, the Assignment Index Page and Quizzes Index Page lets you enable or disable an assignment by clicking the SIS sync icon next to an assignment or quiz. Not Graded assignment types cannot be sent to your SIS.

Each SIS requires specific setup procedures to properly post grades for assignments. Depending on how assignments are assigned to students, some assignments may not be supported. For details and troubleshooting tips, view the appropriate help document for your SIS integration:

• Instructor Help: Canvas and PowerSchool (this integration requires the Post Grades to SIS feature option)
• Instructor Help: Canvas and Skyward

Note: The Banner integration does not require any assignment setup and only pulls total grades from the Gradebook.

Draft State allows content in Assignments to exist in an unpublished (draft) state. Unpublished assignments are invisible to students and excluded from grade calculations. You can manage the state of all assignments on the Assignments Index Page, or you can manage each assignment individually.

Note: If you use Modules in your course and add an Assignment to a Module, please be aware that the state of the Module overrides the state of all module items. You may want to consider leaving Assignments unpublished until you are ready to publish the entire Module. For more information please see the Modules Draft State lesson.

Differentiated Assignments is a Canvas feature that lets you create different due dates and availability dates for assignments, quizzes, and discussions. Assignments and graded discussions can be differentiated for individual students, sections, or groups; quizzes can only be differentiated for individual students or sections. You can designate if the assignment will be limited to those students, sections, or groups or if it will also be assigned to everyone else in the course. Differentiated assignments are also used in MasteryPaths.

When using differentiated assignments with the Gradebook, the assignment appears as a column for all students, but grade cells are grayed out for students who have not been included in the assignment. Grades cannot be assigned for students who have not been included in the assignment. Additionally, assignments that are not assigned to students—whether individually or as part of a section, group, or entire course—are not factored into overall grades. Differentiated assignments are also respected in Multiple Grading Periods.

On the student grades page, students can only view assignments that have been assigned to them.

This lesson is an overview of placement throughout Canvas. Differentiated assignments do not affect your students since they will only see the assignment that have been assigned to them. However, when an assignment includes more than one section, group, or user, Multiple Due Dates will appear across your entire course including Quizzes, Assignments, Discussions, Syllabus, Modules, Course Analytics, Calendar, and SpeedGrader.

You can create assignments on the Assignments page. You can create an assignment shell, which is a placeholder for an assignment within an assignment group, or you can create an entire assignment with all the assignment details at the same time.