How do I Prepare Canvas grades for MyMadison?
Answer
Step 1
Check your “Total” column (pictured in the screenshot above) in the Gradebook. This is a default column and cannot be changed or altered, so there should always be a “Total” column in the Gradebook. Make sure this column is displaying a letter grade alongside the score. You can access your Gradebook by clicking Grades.
If your total column is displaying a letter grade, skip steps 2 and 3.
Step 2
To enable the letter grade you will need to create a scheme for the course. Enter your course and click on settings. On the course details tab, scroll down and check the box that says, “Enable course grading scheme”. Underneath you are given the option (view grading scheme) to edit the grading scheme in case the default one is not what you need.
Step 3
Go back to the Gradebook and check to make sure the “Total” column is displaying a letter grade alongside the score.
Step 4
In Gradebook, click on Actions and then select Export.
Step 5
Open the Excel file you just downloaded. We only need SIS User ID and Final Grade columns. If you do not see a Final Grade column then you did not enable a grading scheme for your gradebook. See Step 2. Right click on the columns that aren’t necessary and click delete.
Step 6
The spreadsheet should look like this:
Step 7
The first row, which has the “Student ID” and “Final Grade” labels must be deleted. Right click on the row and select delete. Choose to delete the row when prompted. There is also a second row that needs to be deleted. This row may have (read only) in some locations but will be blank in most. The final spreadsheet should have no headers or any other data besides the student’s eID and their grade. Look at fig. 7 for comparison.
Step 8
Save the file as a .csv. Go to File > Save As.
When the Save As window pops up, make sure the drop-down bar next to “Save as type:” is on CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv)
The file is now ready to upload to MyMadison.
Sometimes on a Mac the file will not save correctly. Instead of storing a carriage return and newline at the end of a row the file saved on a Mac will only store the carriage return. MyMadison is looking for a newline to determine where the end of a row is, this can lead to complications when attempting to upload your grades. A simple solution to this is to go to Save As and in the Format drop down menu select Windows Comma Separated.
Important notice about downloading the gradebook from Canvas
When you download the gradebook from Canvas, any ungraded assignment will be replaced with a 0 automatically. Final Score (red) is the final score for the student with 0’s in place of any ungraded assignment. Current score is the score they have without the 0’s. If an assignment or quiz that is not submitted should not be a 0, use the Current Score (green) to derive a letter grade from.