Natural Grades vs. Weighted Grades

When working with Moodle, instructors had the choice of how they wanted to aggregate the grades for their course. The most common was natural grading and weighted mean of grades. Natural grades, the default, put all of the points available in a course into one basket and the final grade was however many points a student earned on all of the coursework divided by the maximum points available. Weighted mean of grades allowed instructors to put coursework into categories and assign each category a certain percent of the final grade. 

These options are available in Canvas as well.

Natural Grades

Natural grades are the default way grades are managed in Canvas. The final grade is calculated by the number of points a student has earned out of the maximum points available to them in the course. All of the grade items for the course will appear in the "Grades" section of the course in the order that they appear in the "Assignments" section. 

If you have built your course from scratch, all of the graded items (assignments, quizzes, discussions, etc) will appear in the "Assignments" section as one large group:

If you'd like to put your assignments into categories, please view this article: Making Assignment Groups

In the "Grades" section of your course, your grade items will populate in the order they appear in your "Assignments" tab by default:

To view your gradebook differently, please view Instructors: Gradebook Settings Overview in Canvas

Weighted Graded

In order to weight categories, you must first put your grade items into assignment categories. You can find the steps to do this here: Making Assignment Categories

Once your assignment groups are created, click on the three vertical grey dots in the upper right hand corner:

Select "Assignment Groups Weight":

Check the box to weight final grades, and decide on the percentage that the assignment group should be worth. Canvas will keep track in real time of the total percent. Complete the step by clicking "Save":

You will see the percentages noted in each assignment group:

These percentages are also reflected in the "Grades" section when you scroll all the way to right:

Please note: Individual items within an assignment group will be automatically weighted equally. If you would like to have a specific assignment worth more in the overall course, put the assignment in its own assignment group.