During your time at Flatiron, you may notice an assortment of grades, such as checkmarks, X’s and scores. In some cases, the grades you see may not reflect your actual performance. For example, you may have passed all of the tests in a lab, but you might not see a checkmark. We understand that this can be stressful, so here’s a guide on how we use grades during different parts of the program.

During the First Mile, we use the checkmarks to track your progress and determine your readiness for the program. If you are passing all of the tests in an assignment and submitting it correctly, but a checkmark is not appearing in your Canvas grades (or a complete on the assignment itself), please let your instructor know. We may need to update your grade manually. Feel free to continue with your work while we work on updating your grades.

During Phases 1 through 5, we check that students are working on labs to ensure that they are progressing through the content at the same pace, or better, as the program expects. Here, we aren’t as concerned with grades being checkmarks for assignments.

If you are doing your work and passing the tests, don’t worry about whether or not you’re seeing checkmarks for your grades (or completes on the assignments themselves), but do let your instructor know that Canvas isn’t accurately reflecting your grades, so we can look into what’s happening. Grades on regular assignments aren’t used to determine whether students meet their graduation requirements.

So where are grades important in Phases 1-5? In the Milestones module (projects, blogs, and video submissions), you’ll submit your work manually and you’ll also be graded manually. These grades are used to determine your readiness for entering the next Phase and for graduating. Since all of this work is submitted and graded manually, you can rest assured that your grades will be accurate.