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Grade passback after homework sets are closed

Grade passback after homework sets are closed

by Nick Harvey -
Number of replies: 1
Hello forum,

We are using grade passback via the LTI, with the on-submit option disabled. I have been looking in the documentation and on this forum to see if there is anything regarding at what point grades stop getting passed back. If the global setting is for grade passback to be happening at a specific interval, and no course.conf setting overrides it, will grade passback happen in perpetuity? Or does the grade passback only happen for courses/homework sets that are open?

If the former, I am wondering what approach we should use once grades are in a final state for the semester. Has anyone considered a script that would update the course.conf for a range of courses to make this update?

Thank you,
Nick Harvey
Libraries and Educational Technologies
James Madison University
In reply to Nick Harvey

Re: Grade passback after homework sets are closed

by D. Brian Walton -
Nick,

LTI grade passback uses a routine called mass_update which is called whenever content is generated for an environment where $LTIGradeMode is defined. As far as I can tell, this means within a course with grade passback active. That is, if nobody accesses the WeBWorK course, the mass_update all will not ever be triggered for that course.

Also, so far as I know, there is no sense in which a course is open/closed in WeBWorK, short of archiving and deleting the course.

Regarding individual assignments, the update routine goes through every student enrolled in the course and then through every problem set assigned to that user (regardless of dates) and if there is a passback option created for that assignment, it attempts to send the grade to the LMS.

It is possible currently to disable a single course so that the course no longer will trigger the passback by setting the $LTIMassUpdateInterval = -1 in that course's course config file. Or to entirely disable the passback, one might undefine $LTIGradeMode.

Looking forward to hear if anyone already has a script that disables the passback multiple courses at once.

- Brian Walton