[ARCHIVED] Choice Menu

[chris_capen]

I have an Honors English IV class that is going to be online. I would like to 1) have a contract grading system where students choose the assignments and reading selections they would like to do to earn a certain grade; Assignments would be given different point values and a student would have to choose assignments based on rigor which would be defined by the point value and the grade they've decided they've wanted to earn in the course; 2) I would like to create choice options for assignments and reading materials.

I've seen the hack with mastery paths for creating a choice of reading materials, but can I do this with assignments without having to go and exempt students from assignments they didn't choose because they only want to do assignments for the C or B grade, not the A. How would I be able to translate this to PowerSchool? As only a final grade and keep the grade book solely in Canvas?

I think the glitch is going to come from the grade assigned to assignments if not all the assignments are scored as 100.

Thanks for your help!

[Ron_Bowman]

@chris_capen -

I am not sure if I completely follow what you want - or if I have enough information from you for an answer, but here is one from what I am interpreting.

If you are using Canvas solely as the means to create a grade to import to power school (which I know nothing about), then the following may work

1) use a points based grade book - students should know how many points they need for what grade they want

2) create an assignment group and put your assignments in the group.  

3) setup the grade book to assign 0 points to all ungraded assignments

4) assuming that these are the only assignments for the course, then their total points for the course will be based off of those assignments they create.

5) setup your grading scheme to indicate your a,b,c breakdowns (I don't use points based gradebooks, so I am assuming instead of the 90%,80% split you have the option to use 600, 500, 400 for your splits) -

I went and looked at the manual page on grading schemes- all grades are based on percentages, so to handle the fact that grades are going to be percentages.  You have to set up the grading scheme according to the number of points possible for the assignment group and the number of points necessary for an A.  I.e. if there are 1000 points in possible assignments, but they only need 600 for an A, 500 for a B, etc.  Then your scheme would be set for 60%-100% A, 50%-60% B, etc

6) If there are other assignments for the class in the canvas course, then you would just use the assignment group points to import into power school

I may be way off from what you want, but the above is what I thought off.  

[chris_capen]

Thanks for your reply @Ron_Bowman but it's not quite what I'm looking for. I want to be able to give the students choice in their readings and assignments. I may have to ditch the whole contract grading idea and just go with choice. Then I could do the mastery path hack.

[ethan-franks · Accepted solution]

Hello @chris_capen, 

I think that Mastery Paths would be a good option for you. When students are assigned a certain path that you set up, they are only assigned to those assignments. So you wouldn't have to excuse them from the assignments that are not on their path because they would be assigned to those assignments. Furthermore, I don't think that it would affect your syncing ability in PowerSchool because their grade should be dependent upon their path. 

Here is a guide that should explain its usage better. https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-use-MasteryPaths-in-course-modules/ta-p...

Here is also a very good video guide. https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Video-Guide/Mastery-Paths-Instructors/ta-p/384188