Learn how to use the Set Default Grade feature in Canvas’s Gradebook to lighten the grading workload.<\/p>\n
Whenever a new semester or academic year rolls around, I always find myself thinking about how I get work done and how I can most efficiently approach the grading in the weeks and months ahead of me.<\/p>\n
With this in mind, I want to share a quick and easy tip for using the \u201cSet Default Grade\u201d feature of Canvas\u2019 Gradebook to lessen the grading workload and a specific example from my own classes to demonstrate how I use it.<\/p>\n
Put simply, the \u201cSet Default Grade\u201d<\/a> feature allows you to assign a particular grade to an assignment for either all of the students in a class or all the students who have not yet received a grade. This means that, instead of assigning grades for an assignment one student at a time, you can assign grades to a batch of students with a couple clicks.<\/p>\n As instructors, we\u2019re accustomed to the idea of simplifying the work we ask students to do to make it less stressful or taxing\u2014breaking a large project into chunks with separate due dates, for example. This kind of consideration towards reducing the cognitive load<\/a>, however, doesn\u2019t just apply to students.<\/p>\n Though this may not, initially, seem like it saves much time, setting a default grade reduces the number of clicks you have to make as you grade student work, simplifying the task of assigning grades. This means that the cognitive energy devoted to the task of grading can be more wholly focused on the important part of the process\u2014reading student responses\u2014and less so on the more monotonous aspects of grading\u2014selecting the grade box, entering the score, and saving that score before moving on to the next student.<\/p>\n