Canvas Pro-Tools

Gradebook review tracking, SpeedGrader tweaks, quiz navigation, and rubric enhancements for Canvas LMS instructors.

Canvas Pro-Tools adds practical, everyday improvements to the Canvas LMS web interface for instructors, deans, and administrators. It fills small gaps in the Canvas UI: tracking which submissions you have already reviewed, seeing the effect of a hypothetical grade before you enter it, exporting and importing rubrics as spreadsheets, and finding your way through a long quiz. Everything runs locally in your browser against the Canvas site you are already signed in to. There is no account to create and no service to connect. ────────────────────────────────────────── WHAT IT DOES Each feature can be turned on or off independently from the extension popup. Features that need setup before they do anything, and features aimed at administrators, ship turned OFF so a fresh install is not noisy. Turn on what you need. FOR EVERYONE • Gradebook Review Tracker (off by default) Mark and track which student submissions you have already reviewed, in both the gradebook and SpeedGrader. Define your own review states with custom labels, emoji, and indicator colors. Enable it per course, so it appears only where you want it. • What-If Grades (on by default) Adds a What-If Score column to the instructor view of a student's grades page. Type a hypothetical score, or EX to model an excused assignment, and see the effect on the current and final grade immediately. Assignment group subtotals update as you type. Works with zero-point extra credit assignments. • Rubrics+ (on by default) A set of rubric improvements. The Find a Rubric dialog sorts your current course to the top and shows term information. Export any rubric to CSV from rubric pages, assignments, discussions, and quizzes. The course rubrics list gains a per-rubric export icon plus four sidebar buttons: Import Rubric, Download Template, Export All Rubrics, and Load Rubric Details. A badge on assignments flags whether the attached rubric is actually used for grading. • Assignment Details (on by default) Adds a "Load assignment details" item to the options menu on the assignments index page. Each assignment is annotated in place with its submission type, whether it counts toward the final grade, its rubric, and whether Turnitin is enabled. Nothing changes on the page until you run it. • Checkpoint Rubric Mapper (off by default) For checkpoint-enabled discussions, assign each rubric criterion to a checkpoint. Mapping controls appear on discussion rubrics and on individual rubric pages, and the course rubrics list marks which rubrics are already mapped. In SpeedGrader, saving the rubric assessment sums the mapped scores into the Reply to Topic and Required Replies grade boxes. SPEEDGRADER TWEAKS • Quiz Nav and Highlighting (on by default) Color-codes the quiz navigation links by question status: unanswered, incorrect, or needing manual review (essay, short answer, and fill-in-multiple-blanks). Works in SpeedGrader and in the standalone quiz history view. • Graded At Timestamp (on by default) Shows when a submission was graded and whether it was graded manually or automatically. • Avatar Zoom (off by default) Hover a student's avatar in SpeedGrader to enlarge it, which helps when you are matching names to faces. FOR DEANS AND ADMINISTRATORS • Admin Course Links (off by default) Adds quick-access links beneath each course in the admin course search results, so you can jump straight to Assignments, Modules, People, Grades, and more. Choose which links appear and in what order. • User Enrollments (off by default) Adds a search box plus term and course-status filters to the Courses list on a user's page, and re-sorts it so active enrollments come first. Useful on accounts with long enrollment histories. ────────────────────────────────────────── YOUR DATA STAYS YOURS Canvas Pro-Tools does not collect, transmit, sell, or share any data. There is no server, no analytics, and no telemetry of any kind. Your settings and review markers are stored in your browser's local extension storage on your own device. They are kept separate per Canvas site, so data from different institutions never mixes. Student names, email addresses, grades, and submitted work are never stored. The extension talks only to the Canvas site you are currently using, through Canvas's own API, using your existing login session. It can see nothing your Canvas account cannot already see. You can export your settings and data to a file at any time, and clear any category of stored data from the Data tab. ────────────────────────────────────────── GETTING STARTED Install the extension, then open any Canvas page on your institution's site. Click the Canvas Pro-Tools icon to open the popup, where you can turn features on or off and read a short description of each. Several features are off by default, so it is worth a look on first run. The Tips and Help panel in the popup explains every feature in more detail. ────────────────────────────────────────── COMPATIBILITY Works with Canvas instances hosted on instructure.com subdomains. Self-hosted Canvas domains are not currently supported. ────────────────────────────────────────── OPEN SOURCE AND CREDITS Canvas Pro-Tools is open source under the ISC License. Source, privacy policy, and full attribution are available at: https://github.com/gustafsone/canvas-pro-tools Several features are adapted, with thanks, from two open-source projects: Canvancement by James Jones (ISC License), and Canvas-LMS-Mods by James Sekcienski, known as Code with Ski (MIT License). Per-feature attribution is in CREDITS.md in the repository. This extension is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Instructure, Inc.