The Grade Posting Policy feature is an update that expands Canvas's old grade muting feature to allow you greater control over when assignment and assessment grades are released to students. There are two Grade Posting Policy options: "Automatic Posting" and "Manual Posting."
These policies can be applied to an entire course Gradebook as well as to individual columns within the Gradebook.
Setting a Grade Posting Policy at the course level applies that policy to all the columns in your Gradebook. By default, Canvas sites are set to the Automatic Posting policy, so you do not need to adjust this setting unless you wish to manually release the majority of your course grades to your students.
Best practice: Decide which policy you want to use before the semester begins and student grades are entered.
Even if you have not made all the assignments that will be submitted during the semester, setting the desired course-level Grade Posting Policy at the beginning of the course will ensure that your preferred policy will be applied to any new assignments you create.
Depending on your grading preferences you may not need to assign a Grade Posting Policy at the individual assignment level. For example, if you never wish to hide grades from students, you will not need to adjust your gradebook column settings. Similarly, if you have already opted to apply the Manual Grade Posting Policy at the course level and you want to manually release grades to your students for all assignments, then you will not need to use an individual assignment Grade Posting Policy.
Keep in Mind: Grade Posting Policy changes are not applied retroactively. Make sure you have selected the desired posting policy before you start entering grades.
For example, if your assignment had been set to Manual Posting, and you entered in grades for a few students, those grades would be hidden from students. If you then changed that assignment to Automatic Posting, only grades entered after the change would be automatically posted. You would still need to manually post the grades (selecting the "everyone" option) for the students whose grades you entered prior to changing the policy to be able to view their grades.
Similarly, if your assignment had been set to Automatic Posting, and you entered in grades for a few students, those grades would be visible to students. If you then changed that assignment to Manual Posting, those grades would remain visible to students and only grades entered after the change would be hidden from student view. You would still need to use the "hide grades" option to hide the grades you had already entered prior to changing to a Manual Posting Policy.
Any time you are manually posting grades, we recommend using the "Post to Everyone" option in the menu that appears on the right-hand side of the screen. This will allow you to both release all currently entered grades and any grades you enter in that column in the future without having to re-post the grades.
