LTI 1.3 Integration: Grade Resync Tool

This article covers the features and functionality of the LTI 1.3 Grade Resync Tool. 

If you find that grades aren't syncing correctly between CertMaster and your Learning Management System (LMS), the Grade Resync Tool may be able to help. It provides the following:

• Visibility into what our system has done and what it has attempted to do
• Error messages around grade failures by student and activity
• The ability to attempt to resend the grades from CertMaster to your LMS for either individual students or entire classes.

How to Access the Grade Resync Tool

Note: This tool will only be available if you have course editing and external tool use permissions in your LMS. If you do not, please reach out to your Admin, who will be able to run the tool for you.

1. Open the CertMaster LTI Adv content selector (the same tool used to build LTI links) from the LMS course in question. Where this is found will differ by LMS -- see your LMS's Course-building link in our LTI 1.3 Integration: Complete Guide for info on where find it in each of our supported LMSes.
   • Note: If you do not have course-editing permissions in your LMS, you may need the help of your LMS Admin to access this tool.
2. Click Sync Grades at the bottom of the window that appears.

Using the Tool

The tool has two functions:

• Attempt to resync grades by either student or class. Please note: This is not guaranteed to succeed, especially if the issue that prevented the grades from syncing in the first place has not been resolved.
• Provide visibility into grade sync problems, including error messaging from both CertMaster and your LMS.

Before using the tool to attempt a resync, we strongly recommend looking up the student/class where the issue is occurring, and confirming that the root cause of the issue has been resolved.

1. Select the instructor and class of the affected student(s).
2. You will see a list of students, and the general status of their grade syncs:
   • Green means every attempt to sync has succeeded
   • Yellow means some syncs have succeeded and others have failed
   • Red means no syncs have succeeded.
   • Gray means no syncs have been attempted.
3. Click the affected student to drill down into the list of graded CertMaster items our system sees in the LMS course.
4. Find any red items, and expand the dropdown to see the error messaging around the failure. You may see a long list of errors - if you do, many of these are likely the same error repeated, as our system attempts many retries before giving up.
5. Check any errors against the list below, and resolve as able. If an error does not appear on the list below and the messaging is not clear about what needs to be done to resolve it, contact Support.
6. After resolving any issues, click the button to Resync the student, or close out the student view to return to the class and click the button to Resync the entire class.

Common Errors

Errors from CertMaster

If the error is on the CertMaster side, it's very likely that our system determined that a grade did not need to be sent at all. As a result, a Resync alone will not resolve the issue, as our system believes it's working as intended. However, the message can still give you information on why a grade was not sent.

"Grade sync was attempted for 6 days. The system will no longer attempt to sync."

CertMaster only retries grade syncs for 6 days. After that, it will give up. If you see this message, continue down the error list in the tool, as the source of the issue will be further down.

"Only the highest grade is synced. Score not sent."

Our system only sends the highest grade a learner achieved for a given item, so if they have a pre-existing grade for the activity that was higher than the one they achieved at the time of grade sync, our system will not attempt to send the grade. This can coincide with the start/end date error below if the higher grade that should be synced was achieved outside of the course's start/end dates.

"Result achieved outside of course start/end dates. Score not sent."

Our system does not send grades achieved outside of the CertMaster class's start/end dates, which are set from the LMS course's start/end dates the first time a user launches an LTI link from the LMS course in question. In order to resolve this, set the start/end dates for the CertMaster class so that they encompass the time that the student's work was completed, and then Resync the affected student's grades.

• Note: There is a current known issue with class start/end dates and grade syncing, such that even after changing the start/end dates in CertMaster and the LMS, this error will still prevent syncing. A bug report is in for this and is being prioritized by our development team, but in the meantime, these grades will need to be entered manually.

LMS Errors

If the error message states that your system rejected the grade, this usually means that something in the LMS needs to be changed or reconfigured in order for grades to sync successfully. Note that different LMSes will have slightly different messaging, so the exact wording of the message may not match the wording below.

Not Published: "The assignment/course is not published/available/active."

Grades will only sync if both the assignment and the course are set to be active in the LMS - what that state is called differs by LMS. Fortunately, this is one of the best cases for the Resync Tool. Once the course and assignment have been published in the LMS, resync the grades for that student or class, and the grades should flow properly.

Timestamp conflict: "The timestamp of the submitted grade is earlier than the latest submission's timestamp."

It is part of the LTI specification for LMSes to reject grades that were achieved before the latest grade for that item in the LMS gradebook. This is because some technical issues could theoretically cause an earlier grade to hit the LMS after one that was achieved later on. 

However, this isn't always a benefit, unfortunately. The most common time we see this message is that an instructor has manually entered a grade for an item - either copying a grade from CertMaster, or giving a student a zero, thinking they haven't completed the work. Since this manually-entered grade was "achieved" after the timestamp on the actual work, the LMS rejects the grade resync. 

Unfortunately, this issue is not currently resolvable due to the technical requirements of the specification, and any affected grades will need to be updated manually.

I don't see a line in the tool for the activity I'm looking for - what's going on?

This means our system does not see an associated gradeable assignment in your LMS course. You will need to rebuild that item's LTI link in the course, ensuring that you check off the item as 'Graded' on the final screen of the LTI Content Selector. 

Note that if you created an LMS assignment for the item manually, our system will not see it. The assignment has to have been created by our LTI tool as part of the LTI link creation process in order for grades to sync.

The good news is that once you recreate (and publish!) the assignment link, the next time a user clicks any LTI link in the course, grades for the newly created item should automatically sync to the new gradebook column for all users in a matter of minutes. If this does not happen, run a Resync for the class using the tool, and that should resolve the issue.