Overview

The Grade Posting Policy and Hide Grades features are the biggest changes in the Gradebook and they can seem confusingly ambiguous. We recommend familiarizing yourself with these features before you use them, as they may not function the way you'd think! Using a Grade Posting Policy and Hiding Grades refer to two separate features, and they behave very differently. In the old gradebook these were a single function: mute grades.

First, we'll discuss the Grade Posting Policy and how it can be used on the course and assignment level. Then, we'll talk about how hiding grades works.

Grade Posting Policy

A Grade Posting Policy determines if students get their grades as soon as you input them or after you choose to release them. There are two settings for a Grade Posting Policy: Automatically and Manually. Both your course and assignments are set to Automatically post by default.

The Automatically post policy releases grades to students as soon as you enter them.
The Manually post policy means that when you enter/change grades and comments they are not released to students. If you set an assignment or your entire gradebook to Manually after you've started grading, it will not conceal grades you've already entered.

Warning: Setting a Manual Post Policy for quizzes prevents students from seeing any results, even if you've set the quiz to show correct answers immediately. This is especially important to keep in mind when considering setting a gradebook-wide policy.

Setting a Manual Post Policy

You can set your entire gradebook to a Manually post grades policy by clicking on the gear in the top right corner.

Choose the Grade Posting Policy tab and choose Manually.
Click the Update button to confirm.

Setting the Manual Post Policy for your entire gradebook means you'll have to manually release grades for every assignment.

You can set a single assignment to a Manual Post Policy from the gradebook, as well. This must be done before you start grading.

In the assignment's column in the gradebook, click the three dots icon next to the assignment name.
From the dropdown menu, choose Grade Posting Policy.
Then, select Manually and click the Update button. The word MANUAL will appear by the assignment name.

Hiding Grades Feature

Hide Grades isn't equivalent to muting grades because Hide Grades only hides grades that you've already entered and does not hide any grades you continue to grade for that assignment. This feature is available in the assignment column, It will appear in the speedgrader drop down only after you have started grading.

In the gradebook, click the three dots icon in the assignment column
Choose 'Hide grades.' If you haven't added any grades, the menu option will be grayed out and read 'No grades to hide.'

Hiding grades prevents students from seeing grades you've already posted. If you add a grade for a student that didn't already have a score that grade will not be hidden. Additionally, if students received notifications with their grades included prior to you choosing to hide grades, hiding grades will not prevent them from seeing their grade within that notification.

If you have graded at least one assignment and decide you want to hide the grades, graded and ungraded, choose the grading posting policy in the assignment drop down, then choose Manually, not Hide.

Posting Grades

Whether you used a Manual post policy or the Hide Grades feature, the process to post grades is the same. To tell if there are grades you need to post, look for the crossed eye icon! A crossed eye icon next to the assignment name in the gradebook indicates that at least one grade in the column isn't visible to students.

To post grades, click the three dots icon in the assignment column in the gradebook.
Choose 'Post grades' and follow the on-screen prompts to release grades to students.

For more information about the Grade Posting Policy and Hiding Grades features, check out this support page from Canvas.

Printable: clarification of muting and unmuting assignments