Canvas Gradebook Audit

Inspect the full audit trail of grade changes in a Canvas course. Useful for grade integrity checks, accreditation reviews, and catching accidental bulk edits.

Prerequisites

• Canvas MCP server must be running and connected.
• You must have instructor or admin role — grade history is restricted to privileged roles.
• Canvas must have gradebook history enabled on the instance (most institutions do).

Steps

1. Identify the Target Course

Ask the user which course to audit. Accept a course name, code, or Canvas ID.

If unclear, call list_courses to let them select.

2. Choose Audit Scope

Ask the user one of:

• Date range: "Audit grade changes between [start date] and [end date]"
• Assignment focus: "Show all grade edits for a specific assignment"
• Student focus: "Show all grade edits for a specific student"

Default to the past 30 days if no range is given.

3. Retrieve History Days

Call list_gradebook_history_days with the course ID. This returns a list of calendar days that had grade activity, with a summary count per day.

Filter to the user's requested date range.

4. Drill Into Each Day

For each day with activity, call get_gradebook_history_day with the course ID and the date string. This returns the graders who made changes and the assignments they touched.

Build a running summary:

• Grader name
• Number of submissions edited
• Assignments affected

5. Inspect Individual Edits (When Requested)

If the user wants to see the specific before/after values for a submission, call list_gradebook_history_submissions with the course ID, grader ID, assignment ID, and date. This returns per-student grade change records with old score, new score, and timestamp.

For a full chronological feed without filtering by grader, use get_gradebook_history_feed with the course ID (and optionally assignment ID or student ID).

6. Present the Audit Report

Gradebook Audit — [Course Name]
Period: [start date] → [end date]

SUMMARY
Total days with grade activity: 7
Total grade edits: 143
Graders active: 3

BREAKDOWN BY GRADER
• Prof. Martinez — 98 edits across 4 assignments (Apr 10–18)
• TA Chen — 42 edits across 2 assignments (Apr 12–14)
• System (auto-grade) — 3 edits (Apr 20)

NOTABLE CHANGES
• Assignment "Midterm Essay" — 12 students had scores changed on Apr 14
  Old avg: 71.2  →  New avg: 78.4  (grader: TA Chen)

• Student "Alex Doe" — grade changed 3 times on Apr 18 (possible error)

Ask the instructor if they want to export details or investigate any specific entry further.

Notes

• This skill is read-only — it audits but does not modify grades.
• Gradebook history is append-only in Canvas; this skill surfaces the official audit log.
• For courses with thousands of submissions, use date range narrowing to stay within API rate limits.
• The four gradebook history tools used here (list_gradebook_history_days, get_gradebook_history_day, list_gradebook_history_submissions, get_gradebook_history_feed) are unique to canvas-lms-mcp and not available in other Canvas MCP servers.