Organising marks

Organising marks - Assignments and assignment groups

Understanding assignments and assignment groups

Your assignment group setup in Canvas will influence what you see in your course markbook, what your students see in their view of marks and the options available to you when mapping to the GMS. This video contextualises the 3 most common assignment group setups in Canvas. Detailed step-by-step instructions of how to work with assignments and assignment groups are available in the written text below.

Assignments are individual assessment items that receive marks, as, for example, Written assignment, Online quiz 1, Online quiz 2, Lab report 1, Lab report 2, End-of-trimester exam, Deferred and supplementary exam.

Assignment groups are categories of assignments, such as sets of assignments, reports, quizzes, exams. While they can be used to help organise your assignments, using assignment groups when there are sets of assignments, is extremely important when finalising grades in the University’s Grade Management System (GMS).

Assignments and assignments groups are created separately. Assignments or assignment groups can be mapped to Course Profile assessment featured in Step 1 Assessment Mapping of the GMS depending on the calculation of marks needed.

Creating assignments and mark columns

When preparing your course, you will need to create all the course assessment items that your students do using the Assignment tool and organise them into assignment groups.

These assignments can be “assignment shells”, meaning that they simply state the assessment title, due date, and how many points they are worth as defined in the Course Profile. You can come back and edit each assignment at any time to include more detailed information. However, it is important when creating your assignment shells to determine the types of assignments your students will complete, for example, Quizzes, Discussions, and Assignments.

For any marked assessments for which students will not submit work via Canvas, (e.g. presentation or an in-person exam), create a No Submission or On Paper submission type assignment.

For more information, see How do I create assignment columns for non-submission assignments? (Canvas Guides).

Adding assignment groups

A Canvas course site must have at least one assignment group which is why on creation of each course site, a default ‘Assignments’ assignment group is created.

For an Assessment Plan, published in the Course Profile, which is ‘flat’ in structure, as all assessments comprise of only one (1) assignment per task, then the default ‘Assignments’ assignment group can be used to group all assignments the course. We just suggest you change the name of this assignment group to “Assessments” to reflect Griffith policy and avoid possible confusion to students around what is covered in policy.

Example of a flat assessment plan

For an Assessment Plan, published in the Course Profile, which either has a single assessment task made up of sub-tasks (e.g. quizzes, lab reports etc) or requires an additional assignment (not the original assessment) to manage underperformance or deferment, grouping of assignments is necessary for the Markbook to calculate a total mark for the assignment group, that is then used in the University’s Grade Management System (GMS) to help derive a final grade for the course. In this way, the assignment group is a sub-total column that is mapped to a single assessment item in the GMS.

Example of a non-flat assessment plan

When adding and naming your assignment groups, please be aware that students can see all assignment groups in a course, whether assessment has or hasn’t been added to the group.

For more information, see How do I add an assignment group to a course? (Canvas Guides).

Moving assignments to different assignment groups

If you need to adjust your setup of assignment groups later in the trimester, you can continue to create and move existing assignments around, even once assignments have been submitted and/or marked. Detailed information on how can be found in the Canvas Guides.

If you have mapped your assessment in the Grade Management System (GMS) and you have made changes to assignment groups that affect your mapping, you will need to re-do the mapping.

Weighting assignment groups

Canvas allows you to apply weighting on each assignment group to calculate the final percentage mark for students in the course. If weighting is not applied, the “Total” for the course will be a running total of all marks. For more information, see How do I weight the final course based on assignment groups? (Canvas Guides).

It is highly recommended that assignment group weighting is not applied in Canvas and that totals are hidden from students in their mark summary view. For detailed information on how to, see How do I hide totals in my student's grade summaries? (Canvas Guides).

Assessment weightings are approved and published to students as part of the Assessment Plan in the Course Profile and are applied in the University’s Grade Management System (GMS) when calculating the final grade for a course. If weighting is not applied to your assignment groups, then the overall course total (final course percentage mark) displayed to the student in Canvas will not be correct, therefore it is recommended that you also hide totals from students.  To understand how students view their marks, see Canvas' Student Guide on the subject (Canvas Guides).

If you do choose to apply weightings to your assignment groups and show totals to students, it is important that you:

1. Ensure the weightings assigned in Canvas, match those weightings approved and published in the Course Profile.
2. Monitor the totals calculated.  Your set-up of assignments (assigning assignments to assignment grouping, applying drop rules or not, using the Assign To field or not) and marking (use of 0s instead of [-]), may impact the accuracy of a student’s overall course total – displayed to both Instructors via the Markbook and to students.

Note: Griffith has historically and continues to strongly encourage Course Convenors to hide totals displayed to students in the University’s LMS. Firstly, this is to avoid the likelihood of miscalculation of a student’s final percentage mark in the LMS and avoid student complaints. If assignment groups or assignments are unintentionally setup incorrectly, the LMS can communicate inconsistent final percentage mark outcomes to the student when compared to the final percentage mark calculated by the Grade Management System (GMS). Secondly, students may use their final percentage mark to assume their final grade. During the grading period, final percentage cut-offs for each grade may be adjusted, mandatory pass components and supplementary assessment policy may be applied; just some of the factors that can change the outcome of a student’s final grade.

Including only marked assignments in an assignment group

Assignment groups can be used to combine marks across a set of assignments, reports, quizzes, exams for the calculation of an overall assignment mark.

If you intend to use an assignment group to obtain an overall assignment mark, you need to carefully consider the assignments you include in your assignment group. Any points associated to these assignments will be included in the total percentage mark for the assignment group, which is then used to calculate grades for students in the University’s Grade Management System (GMS).

Set of Quizzes

Example: A practice quiz has been included in a ‘Weekly Quiz’ assignment group.

In this scenario, the “Practice Quiz (Optional)” assignment will be included in the overall “Weekly Quiz” assignment group mark and will calculate 89/110 = 80.9%, that will then be used in the GMS calculation of the student’s final grade.

In this example, it is best to ensure the quiz has been setup as a “Practice Quiz” Quiz Type (non-graded quiz), or move the ‘Practice Quiz (Optional)’ to another Assignment Group, so that only the quiz assignments that contribute toward the overall “Weekly Quiz” assessment group mark are included, and instead calculates 81/100 = 81%.

Excluding practice assessments from final mark

Alternatively, another option is to consider excluding the “Practice Quiz (Optional)” from the course’s final marks, by selecting the Do not count this assignment toward the final mark checkbox. This option is available on “New Quizzes’ and ‘Assignments’ only.

For more information, see How do I exclude an assignment from a course's final grades? (Canvas Guides).

You may see a test student when organising marks. They do not get passed over into the grade management system.