Unused Assignment Groups in Canvas Courses

As described in Setting Up a Weighted Gradebook in Canvas in Conjunction with Simple Syllabus, Assignment Groups in Canvas can be used as a way to organize and group similar assignments together. In addition, you can weight your Assignment Groups with percentages for grading purposes. For example, you may have the following weighted Assignment Groups:

  • Assignments: 50%
  • Exams: 35%
  • Discussion Topics: 15%
  • TOTAL: 100%

In your Canvas course(s), you may have Assignment Groups that are unused. In the following example, three Assignment Groups are displayed on the Assignments page of a Canvas course. Two of these Assignment Groups, “Imported Assignments” and “Assignments”, do not have any assignments in them. The middle “Sample Assignment Group (faculty edit this)” Assignment Group has an unpublished assignment in it called “Assignment (Template)”.

This "Assignments" screen in Canvas shows three unused Assignment Groups that can be deleted from the course.

While it may be fine to leave these unused Assignment Groups in this course, it can create possible confusion for the students in this course. Even though the Assignment Groups either have no assignments in them or have unused, unpublished assignments in them, those Assignment Groups still show for students in their own Grades page. When looking the Student View of the Gradebook, they will see Assignment Groups listed on the right-hand side of their screen. (These are the same Assignment Group names from your Assignments page.)

Viewing the Gradebook as a student would see it, Assignment Group names are listed on the right-hand side of the "Grades" page.

In the above example, the unused Assignment Groups are listed for students. They may not know what “Imported Assignments” means, or they may not know why they are seeing “Sample Assignment Group (faculty edit this)”.

Viewing the Gradebook as a student would see it, Assignment Group names are listed at the bottom of the screen just above the "Total" row.

Similarly, still in a student’s view of the Gradebook, these same Assignment Group names are listed at the bottom of the screen above the “Total” row.

If you have Assignment Groups that are either empty or won’t be used in your Canvas course(s), it is safe to delete them. This will help:

  • to keep your Assignments page clean and organized.
  • to eliminate those unused Assignment Group columns at the end of your own Gradebook.
  • your students to better understand how their grades are being assessed in your course(s).

Deleting Unused Assignment Groups

  1. Navigate to your Assignments index page of your course in Canvas.
  2. Click the Options (three-dot kebab) icon to the right of an Assignment Group name.
  3. Select 🗑️ Delete to delete the Assignment Group from your course.
To delete an Assignment Group, on the "Assignments" index page, click on the Options (three-dot kebab) icon, and then select "Delete".

Additional Resources