You may have been familiar with muting and un-muting feature in Canvas. It was used to delay grades and feedback to your students so they could all be sent out at the same time. The new Canvas grade book has replaced this feature with one that is similar but with some new caveats.

First, rather than the bell icon and function verbiage "Mute," the icon is an eye and the function verbiage is "Post" grades.

Second, to "Mute" grades properly you will want to adjust the Grading Policy in the grade book before your course begins or at least before students submit their work to assignments and quizzes or make contributions to discussions. If you don't have the Manual Grade Posting Policy turned on before students have submitted to the assignments page, grades will be automatically submitted to students even if you set the assignment to hide grades retroactively.

This tutorial will go over how to set up and use the Manual Grade Posting Policy.

Note: Turning on Manual Grading Mode will mean that you will have to post grades for quizzes for the results to be released, even if they are graded by the computer.

Step 1: Navigate to Grade Book

Click on the Grades link in the left-hand vertical navigation menu.

Go to Grades to access your grade book and grade book settings

Step 2: Navigate to the Grade Book Settings Menu

On the top-right of the grade book, click on the gear icon.

Go to the gear icon on the top-right to access the grade book settings.

Step 3: Select the Grade Posting Policy

A menu with the grade book setting will appear in a pop-up.

Click on the Grade Posting Policy tab.

The menu will describe how the posting policies work. For the purpose of this tutorial select Manually Post Grades and click on the blue Update button in the bottom-right corner. If the grading policy has already been set you can cancel and ignore this step.

Go to the Grade Posting Policy tab and select the policy you wish to use. Press update to complete the change.

Posting Grades from SpeedGrader

In the SpeedGrader, on the top-left is an icon with an eye that has been crossed through. Click on that icon to bring up menu with Post Grades option.

The SpeedGrader will have an eye that has a cross through it indicating that the grades are currently hidden. When you are ready to post grades, you can click on the eye icon and select Post Grades from the drop-down menu.

Posting Grades from Grade Book

Navigate to the relevant assignment column. Click on the three-dot vertical menu button located on right side of the cell in the top row of the grade book. Click on the Post grades function.

In the grade book you can access the Post Grades button by going to the column for the grades you want to post, go to the vertical three-dot button and then select Post Grades.

Posting Grades to Everyone or Graded Students

A menu on the right will appear. This will ask you if you wish to post the grades to everyone in the course or only those people who have been graded. Select who gets graded and click post to send out the grades.

Which ever way you decide to post grades a menu will always appear which asks you if you want to post grades to all students in the course or only students that have been graded thus far. If you have selected Graded before and still had students that needed to be graded, you will want to remember to post grades again to release the grades and feedback to students that have not received them yet.