Overview
Post Policies are a feature to release grades and feedback to students when instructors are ready for grades to be available to students. This change redefines assignment-wide muting to an individual assignment level, making grades visible down to individual sections of a course, or hiding previously posted grades if needed. Instead of muting or unmuting all submissions at once, instructors can make grades visible to individual sections of a course one by one, or hide previously posted grades if needed.
An assignment’s behavior is determined by its posting policy:
- Automatic posting: Grades or comments an instructor leaves on a submission are automatically made visible to the student, although they may be hidden later. This policy is the default policy for non-anonymous, non-moderated assignments (and matches Canvas’s previous behavior).
- Manual posting: Feedback left by an instructor must be “posted” to be visible to the student, which matches Canvas’s current behavior for muted assignments. Anonymous or moderated assignments must be manually posted, while non-anonymous, non-moderated assignments may optionally be set to Manual posting.
Visuals in the Gradebook
As part of these changes, you may now see an eye icon or a Manual label at the top of a column.
| Icon/Label Displayed |
Meaning |
| No icon |
- The assignment or course grading policy is set to Automatic.
- Future graded submissions will be available to students immediately.
|
| Slashed Eye |
- Current grades and comments are hidden from student view.
- Future grades and comments are not hidden from student view. You will need to re-hide the grades to capture additional submissions made past the initial setting of hiding grades.
|
| Manual Label |
- The assignment or course grading policy is set to Manual.
- All graded submissions have been posted, but future graded submissions will be hidden from students until posted.
|
Post Policies Workflow
Post policies can be set at two levels:
- for each individual assignment
- for the entire course
Exceptions can be made to a course-wide policy if needed by setting a post policy for an individual assignment. As mentioned above, there are two types of post policies that can be setup:
- Automatic Posting, where students will see grades immediately.
- Manual Posting, which requires instructors to post grades for students to see.
When using a Manual policy, whether it's for an individual assignment or for the entire course, the students will not receive new notifications about or be able to see:
- Their grade for the assignment
- Grade change notifications
- Submission comments
- Curving assignments
- Score change notifications
It's important that once you're ready for students to see feedback and scores that you remember to post the grades.
Use Cases
| If you want to... |
Then... |
| Hide an assignment's grades from all students (equivalent to "muting" an assignment) |
If students have not already started submitting grades, you'll need to set a manual post policy for that assignment. Once you do that, a Manual label will appear for the column.
If grades are already entered for all students and you don't plan on entering any additional grades or feedback, you can hide grades for that assignment. Once you do that, a slashed eye icon will appear for the column, indicating grades are Hidden.
Note: Grades or feedback entered after selecting Hide Grades will not be hidden. Hiding grades is a temporary measure meant to hide current grades at the time of selecting Hide Grades. It does not hide future changes from students.
If grades are already entered for students and you are continuing to make changes, you'll need to both set a manual post policy and hide grades for that assignment. This will add both a Manual label and a a slashed eye icon for the column.
With all situations, make sure you post grades for that assignment when you're ready for students to see them.
|
| Immediately show an assignment's grades to all students |
This is the default behavior for assignments in the Gradebook, unless a global Manual policy has been set.
If you've hidden grades for an assignment, make sure that the grades are posted for that assignment.
|
| Globally for all assignments, ensure that all grades for all assignments are immediately available to students (equivalent to previous Gradebook default behavior) |
This is the default behavior in the Gradebook.
You can check this setting if you want, by viewing the post policy for the entire Gradebook.
|
| Globally for all assignments, hide all grades for all assignments until you post them to students |
You can set a default Manual post policy for the entire Gradebook. |
| Set-up an assignment so it always hides grades or shows grades, or set an exception to a global post policy. |
You can set a post policy for that specific assignment, which will override the global post policy. |
More Information
As with all of Canvas's features, there's a collection of resources available in the Canvas Guides.