One of the primary uses of Canvas is to allow students to always get an up to date grade and to see how they are doing in the course.  To keep this grade accurate, not only do grades need to be entered in a timely manner, there is also one thing that can seriously throw off a grade: “dashes.”  These “dashes” in the gradebook are assignments that have not been graded in any way, thus making them not count for or against that student, skewing the results.  The following video explains it very simply: