Muting Assignments in Canvas

When grading paper assignments, you may have found that you would grade them over some period of time - maybe a week or a weekend, and then return them to the students all at once during class. Now, in the days of online assignment submissions & grading, it is important to note that by default, all grades and comments on student assignments in Canvas are immediately released to the student.

Luckily, there is a way that you can hide these grades and comments from students until you are ready to release them to the entire class - giving you the flexibility to spread out your grading time or go back and adjust the grades before releasing them. This process is called "muting" an assignment, and you can access the feature from your Canvas gradebook.

In order to mute an assignment, click the arrow next to the assignment title and select "Mute Assignment". When your assignment is muted, you will see a "muting" symbol (speaker with a red line through it) next to the assignment title.

When you are ready to unmute an assignment and release the grades, simply click the arrow again and select "Unmute Assignment".

Tip: Many instructors choose to mute all of their assignments at the beginning of the quarter, and unmute them as they are ready to release the grades throughout the quarter. This helps prevent accidents in which you forget to mute the assignment and release one or more students' grades before you are ready. If you have released student grades on an unmuted assignment, they will remain visible to the student even if you later mute the assignment.

For more information about muting assignments, click here.

#canvas #grading