Setting up Your Canvas Gradebook

This article provides basic instructions for setting up your grade book in Canvas. 

Note: The Canvas grade book structure is set up in the Assignments tab, which you can located in your Canvas course navigation menu. 

Create assignments.

• You will want to create an assignment for each graded activity in your course, even if students are not making a submission in Canvas. To create an assignment, click the +Assignments button in the Assignments area of your Canvas course. 

• If you have a graded activity where students are not making a submission in Canvas, under Submission Type in the assignment settings, you can choose options like "no submission" or "on paper" for these assignments, so students know they are not uploading any work.

• You can create Discussions/Quizzes in those areas of Canvas-if they have a point value applied, they will appear in the Assignments area. 
• If you are using a point-based grading system, make sure you set the point value of each assignment to the point value communicated in your course syllabus.

Create assignment groups.

• Assignment groups allow you to organize your assignments into buckets or categories. We recommend that your Assignment group names match any weighted category names in your syllabus. 
• To add an assignment group, go to Assignments and click the +Group button. This will let you create a group and give it a name. 

Place each assignment into its group

• Drag and drop each assignment into it's group, or click the plus (+) icon to create a new assignment within the group. 

• Note: Items migrated via Moodle will be placed into a group called Imported Assignments. You can rename this group or you can move all assignments into other groups and delete this group. 

Weigh assignment groups

• If you are using a point-based grading structure, make sure each graded assignment is assigned the appropriate number of points. All graded assignments should add up to your course point total. 
• If you are using a weighted grade book structure, in the Assignments area, click the three dots on the upper right-hand side of the window (next to the +Assignment button). Select Assignment Groups Weight. 

• Check the box next to Weight final grade based on assignment groups
• Assign percentage weights until the combined percentage equals 100%.