[ARCHIVED] How can I create a "Bonus" question, adding "extra credit" points to a quiz that has a fixed total possible points value?

[dhunt2]

Hi! At the end of each of my quizzes, I usually like to add "extra credit" or "bonus questions," which are not required for students to answer, but provide an opportunity for students to earn 1 or 2 points beyond the "total possible" points of the quiz?

[kblack · Accepted solution]

Hi  @dhunt2 ​ - Yes, you can do this.  And to give credit where credit is due, the second bullet item listed under  @kmeeusen ​'s response to a somewhat similar (though broader) question provides what you need:  .  This topic has flared up from time to time in the Community--mostly for how to given an entire quiz that is worth extra credit points (no answer on that one yet, though everyone hopes improvements are coming soon via the new quiz engine), but a specific question is fairly easy to pull off.

Basically, just add your extra credit question, and perhaps explain in the question that they can earn up to xx number of points by answering it correctly.  The question itself, however, must be worth zero points.

Then, when grading it, you can simply manually adjust the points on that specific question using the text box editor or spin control box next to the score while looking over each student's quiz, as shown below:

Canvas does not "care" if the total score is more than what the quiz itself was worth...it will still dutifully tally the total points scored for each student.

Hope this helps a bit.

[kblack · Accepted solution]

Hi  @dhunt2 ​ - Yes, you can do this.  And to give credit where credit is due, the second bullet item listed under  @kmeeusen ​'s response to a somewhat similar (though broader) question provides what you need:  .  This topic has flared up from time to time in the Community--mostly for how to given an entire quiz that is worth extra credit points (no answer on that one yet, though everyone hopes improvements are coming soon via the new quiz engine), but a specific question is fairly easy to pull off.

Basically, just add your extra credit question, and perhaps explain in the question that they can earn up to xx number of points by answering it correctly.  The question itself, however, must be worth zero points.

Then, when grading it, you can simply manually adjust the points on that specific question using the text box editor or spin control box next to the score while looking over each student's quiz, as shown below:

Canvas does not "care" if the total score is more than what the quiz itself was worth...it will still dutifully tally the total points scored for each student.

Hope this helps a bit.

[ChandlWM]

I have discovered that it is easier to make the extra credit question in a separate quiz of its own then make the quiz question or the quiz entirely worth only one point now at this point when people are done taking a quiz you go to the grades screen if they got a zero leaving is zero if they got a one you can just type over the top or paste the value 20 or some other number its a lot  faster than using speed grader

[jbarnum1]

"while looking over each student's quiz" is the problem. I sense this is not a response originating from a teacher, or at least one with a large class.

Canvas team: this needs to be an auto-graded option. Really, in 2022, this is silly not to have (particularly when other LMS' include this feature).

[olsonhum]

Thanks to  @kblack ‌ for what I consider a "workaround" to accomplish this in Canvas. In D2L, e.g., you can actually mark a question as bonus/extra credit. If a student doesn't answer it - no problem. If a student does, s/he gets that extra point. No need to go back and do anything manually after the fact.

Although for some of my quizzes I manually grade some/all questions, I've written many quizzes with question types that are all graded automatically by Canvas. I thus have no need to go in and look at students' answers and enter (or adjust) their scores in the gradebook afterward. With the current suggestion, I have to do this for every quiz I ever give if I want to give EC points.

Please upgrade, Canvas (to D2L functionality).

[carrie_at_meyer]

Blackboard has this same functionality. ANY plans to make this an option within Canvas?

The work arounds are very time consuming for people who have large courses!

[erc2]

And with 600-1,000 or more students in class each semester, we definitely cannot go in and check each student's bonus question individually. Sort of defeats the purpose of having technology to help us with this!

[ChandlWM · Accepted solution]

You can't. You can make a question in the quiz, then use speed grader, and

then after you look at each one tell if it is correct, just add more points

or "fudge points."

I think it is easier to make 2 quizzes. 1 is the normal test. Then the

2nd quiz has the bonus question which I make worth 1 point.

Subsequently the quiz will be worth 1 point. In the grades screen, I sort

by high to low and then change any 1's I see to the bonus amount you

promised them.

If I had to include an essay in a test, I would make the essay it's own

quiz so that students got immediate feedback on the portion of the test

that can be autograded by canvas.

[colphyteach]

Makes sense. 2 quizzes.  Imagine having 300 students...

I wouldn't want to click over probably 400 times just to add bonus points.

[erica_wagner]

Absolutely, and this is true even for those of us with smaller classes. Wish there were a way to designate a bonus question, assignment, or quiz without having to hand grade.

[LyleKonigsberg]

Neither the "0 points trick" nor "fudge points" allow for auto-grading of a quiz with extra credit.  This could be handled by having a checkbox for a question that is extra credit.  For example, on a 20 question multiple choice quiz, there could be a 21st question that is marked as extra credit for one point.  A student who misses one of the 20 questions but gets the extra credit would get 100%.  A student who gets all 20 questions correct but misses the extra credit also gets 100%. 

[mho]

I don't understand how this works. Where does the checkbox come from? 

[Chris_Hofer]

@mho …

@LyleKonigsberg was not saying that a checkbox currently exists.  Instead, the suggestion was that *if* a checkbox existed, this might be a better way to specify extra credit points for a quiz.

[mzkm]

Here's how I would do it if normally all your exams are fully auto-graded: 

Create a secondary assignment with the extra credit question(s) and simply excuse a student's grade for it if it is below the exam category average.  

Here's how I would do it if normally all your exams have a manually graded aspect:

Put the extra credit question(s) at the end of the exam and worth 0-points, then manually increase the point value in each question's point box when grading.

[Tibbke]

This is the best workaround I have found. This is a way to add extra credit points in the Gradebook instead of using SpeedGrader. Making it faster to add extra credit in larger classes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvaEGXWH6Fw&t=29s

[mho]

What I do is that I make a quiz, say Quiz 1, with all the point value for each question that the student earns. I move all the extra questions to the end, with a text indicating the start of the extra credit questions. I put Quiz 1 in a category worth 0% of the grade.

Then I create an assignment with no submission called Quiz 1 Adjusted, with a total not including the extra credit, in the proper category. After grading Quiz 1, I download the grades, copy the scores from column Quiz 1 to Quiz 1 Adjusted, then upload it back. 

This allows autograding in the original quiz for extra credit questions.

[komosinskira]

This is what I do, too. But it is still somewhat of a pain because then any change that comes up later in a quiz (for instance discovering that the word bank is really not working correctly at all and questions need regraded) you then would need to redo the export to address those points. You at least still don't need to manually grade quizzes for hundreds of students, but it does still delay the process somewhat.

[Gregory_Putman]

Hi,

In a typical semester I have between 750 - 800 students in a total of up to 20 sections of 5 different courses.  I appreciate the workarounds mentioned in this thread.  It looks like in my situation I'll spend too much time doing workarounds to make it worth it - I'll try workarounds just because I really don’t want to stop having bonus questions at all but am really not looking forward to needing a workaround...  Adding time-consuming, repetitive tasks to already very busy TAs will likely appear to them as if I’m adding busy work and would just be asking for a "creative" work-around that will likely result in everyone simply receiving full credit regardless of whether the bonus work is actually attempted or not. 

Blackboard expected bonus/extra credit questions to be part of our course design and had them as a part of their basic toolkit for content creation and made it an easy and integrated part of their LMS.  A quick search shows that Moodle and D2L both also appear to have a checkbox in settings to denote a question as being extra credit. 

Is there somewhere on this website that I'm missing that allows us to directly communicate issues with basic functionality to the Canvas developers? 

This is my first semester with live students in my Canvas courses after being migrated from Blackboard and I keep finding basic functionality issues like this that cause me to need to divert more and more time away from interacting with students to dealing with long-term, time and labor-intensive workarounds for issues that computers are typically excellent at handling quickly and efficiently.  

I completely understand wanting us to suggest cool new features in the community pages online and monitoring up-votes to see if there is enough interest to spend developers/resources on developing them... but I keep finding threads that span years, in some cases more than 5, regarding basic functionality issues such as not having the option to designate a quiz question as being bonus or the grade book not actually calculating average grades, or not having a way to manually override a specific grade for individual students that are part of a group without going in to the settings to make the entire assignment "individual" for the entire class, or completely lacking any option to add basic calculations to the grade book requiring constant downloading and uploading back and forth between excel and Canvas for even minor updates..., or being able to do a batch edit for dates that assignments and quizzes are available and due but not being able to do a batch edit for time of day associated with these dates... 

Help!  I'm losing so much time now that I've been migrated to Canvas and my students are being impacted.  Who can I speak with? 

There are positive aspects of Canvas that I really appreciate, don’t get me wrong, but Canvas would be a really great platform if we can get a few more of the basics worked out.

[erica_wagner]

This is a great question, and it frustrates me how hard it is to explain to people why it's an issue. The most common answers seem to dance around the problem or to suggest that we shouldn't need to do what we want to do as instructors. The tech should drive our pedagogies, rather than the tech supporting our pedagogies. It doesn't seem like something that should be hard to fix, but the fact that they haven't after years of discussion suggests that the developer team doesn't think we should be giving bonus questions that add points to a student's score without altering the points possible. The suggestions that we should simply hand grade them--add the points manually--defeats the entire purpose of having the capacity to auto grade questions.

I have a similar issue with a bonus, or point make up, assignment I've given students. I have to set it to zero and take the time to hand grade and tally all the submissions at the end of the semester, when time is already very tight.

[chadscott]

@Gregory_Putman yes, there is. Visit the ideas board, you can search and see if it's already been suggested. If so, vote it up by clicking the stars. If not, you can create a new idea.

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/idb-p/ideas

Cheers,

Chad

[PeterJamesMcla]

Just add your additional credit and maybe tell them they can get up to xx points for answering it correctly. tho the value of the question must be in zero, once you've reviewed each students quiz. Or you can also manually alter the points on that question by using the text box editor or spin the control box next to the score.