When Milestones are used in a Harmonize Graded Discussion, a feature called Auto-Grading can be turned on to automatically calculate a participation score as students meet the requirements for each Milestone. This feature allows instructors to focus their time and efforts on grading the quality of students posts by removing the need to manually count the number of posts and comments.
When does Harmonize send the participation score to SpeedGrader?
Assuming the discussion has one or more Milestones and Auto-Grading enabled, Harmonize will send a student's score to SpeedGrader when one of the following occurs, whichever comes first:
- The student completes all requirements for all Milestones
- The dues dates for all Milestones on the assignment have passed
In the image below a student has completed both milestones by 7:36 PM for an assignment due at midnight. Once their work is submitted, Harmonize will automatically send the sum of the points associated to the two milestones and populate the score in SpeedGrader.
When do students see the Harmonize grade in Canvas?
Students will see their score for the assignment on their Canvas Dashboard in "Recent Feedback" and in their individual grades as soon as the score generated by Harmonize Auto-Grading appears in the SpeedGrader score text box.
On the student dashboard, under recent feedback, Laverne sees a score of 14/15 as soon as the grade is sent from Harmonize to SpeedGrader. The score will also appear for that assignment in the Canvas grade book (see below).
What happens if a student completes only some of their Milestones?
If a student only completes one of the Milestones, they will receive points for only that milestone and none for the Milestones that were not met. In the image below, you can see 2 points were earned for the first Milestone. The second Milestone was not completed, earning the student 0 points for a total of 2 out of 7 points.
If a student completes a portion of the requirements in a Milestone, they will receive a percentage of the possible points. In the image below you can see a student completed one of three requirements for the second Milestone, which works out to 3.33 of 10 possible points.
LTI apps, like Harmonize, are only able to transmit scores as a percentage back to Canvas. In our example below, 8.33 points out fo 15 converts to a percentage of 53.3%. Canvas calculates 53.3% of 15 as 8 points, which is what's displayed in SpeedGrader.
What happens if a student submits work after the due date?
If students complete requirements after Milestone due dates, their content will still appear in the SpeedGrader view but it will be marked as late. Likewise, their Milestone section will be highlighted in red to note that the milestones were completed after the due date. Note in this view that Harmonize sent a score of 0 for Bernadette because she completed both Milestones after their respective due dates.
This score of 0 can be edited by the instructor once they have graded the student's late work. The student will then be notified through their Canvas notifications that the grade has been changed.
⚠️ CAUTION WITH MILESTONES
Setting a Milestone requirement to be completed after the Canvas Assignment due date may result in student work being marked late by Canvas. To avoid this, set all Milestones to before the due date or use the "Available to" or "Available from" dates to anchor your Milestones, and do not set a specific "Due date" in the Canvas Assignment Settings.
Can students edit their work after the due date?
No, once a grade has been given for a student, either manually by the instructor or by Harmonize via the Auto-Grading feature, the posts and comments present at the time of grading will become locked and cannot be edited by the student.
Students can, however, create new posts and comments after the due date has passed as long as the assignment is still available. In Canvas, assignments remain accessible by students until the "Available Until" date set on the assignment has passed.
When a student is late completing a Milestone, the requirements bar for the Milestone will be marked in red, both in the student's view and in SpeedGrader. A check mark will appear if they have completed the milestone, an exclamation point if they have not.
Can instructors change the participation score created by Harmonize?
Yes, instructors can change the score in SpeedGrader as they see fit. This is done by editing the score in the SpeedGrader score text box.
Can instructors hide the Auto-Grade score from students?
Yes, instructors can hide the Auto-Grade score from students by adjusting the Grading Policy on the assignment. Canvas assignments have a Grading Policy feature that allows for grades to be visible to students either automatically or manually. If the instructor would like to hide the score generated by Harmonize Auto-Grading, they can set that assignment's grade to "Hidden" either in the grade book or in SpeedGrader.
Once the grades have been reviewed and adjusted by the instructor, they can then "un-hide" those grades, allowing students to see them in both the course grades and recent feedback. This can be done in the Canvas Grade book through the Grade Posting Policy as shown below.
