[ARCHIVED] How to grade daily classroom participation

[bteo10]

I want to be able to grade students' class participation during each class. I have tried using the Attendance badges, but it does not automatically change the grade once a badge has been added; it is simply for note-taking purposes. I know that I can change the grade manually, but I would prefer a feature that is linked to Gradebook. Does anyone know of a way that I can grade daily classroom participation? Thanks!

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

Hello,  @bteo10  Welcome to the Canvas Community! Have you considered making daily participation an assignment with a rubric attached to it? You can create a rubric that has a separate row for each day with criteria as straightforward as "Participated" and "Did Not Participate"--or more detailed if you choose--and you can use the SpeedGrader to add points to the assignment each day by clicking the appropriate row in the rubric, so that students' grades for the assignment will cumulatively increase with each day of participation.

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

Hello,  @bteo10  Welcome to the Canvas Community! Have you considered making daily participation an assignment with a rubric attached to it? You can create a rubric that has a separate row for each day with criteria as straightforward as "Participated" and "Did Not Participate"--or more detailed if you choose--and you can use the SpeedGrader to add points to the assignment each day by clicking the appropriate row in the rubric, so that students' grades for the assignment will cumulatively increase with each day of participation.

[paccioretti_tho · Accepted solution]

Hi Kristin - learning CANVAS has been painful for us on-ground folks, it seems it was built for on-line.  That said, it's our CANVAS now.  Your class contribution grading suggestion is to create 26 assignments, one for each day of class and grade each student for each class using the rubric.  I like that idea but then the grade "book" stretches so long - have you used this approach? 

[awcoon]

Thank you for sharing this work around. Along with others, I wish that Canvas would create another option similar to the attendance in which we can grade students' participation. Let's please try to vote up a request for this. It was an option available within Moodle.

[amarculetiu]

I have the same issue regarding participation. I wish there was an additional (or same) seating chart to use for participation points, that way you can tap on a student  - 1 tap, 1 point. I think this would create good incentive for students to participate since they could see a participation grade "real-time"

[paccioretti_tho]

Hi Stefanie I replied to the wrong post - learning CANVAS has been painful for us on-ground folks, it seems it was built for on-line.  That said, it's our CANVAS now.  Your class contribution grading suggestion is to create 26 assignments, one for each day of class and grade each student for each class using the rubric.  I like that idea but then the grade "book" stretches so long - have you used this approach? 

[Stef_retired]

Sorry if I wasn't clear,  @paccioretti_tho ! My suggestion was to create a single assignment called Participation (so no stretched gradebook!) and attach to it a rubric with 26 rows, one for each day. The teacher would then update the grade for the assignment each day, thereby adding the cumulated points day by day to the single assignment. Does it make more sense now?

[paccioretti_tho]

Stephanie - I like that ALOT.  Nice.  Badges for you.  Thank you.

While I have you.  Here's another dilemma I have.  I give combination multiple choice and essay exams.  I want students to be able to use their laptops as I have found their essays answers to be richer and deeper when they can type rather than writing it out by hand. Plus it is easier to grade - I don't have to follow arrows around pages and decipher handwriting.  However, it Quizzes (don't get me started on that) I can setup multiple choice, easy peasy.  I can also set up individual essay questions but I can't run them through TurnItIn.  I can use assignment for an essay questions because that can be run through TurnItIn, but I need to make an assignment for each essay question.  So for a 10 multiple choice and 3 essay question exam, er quiz, I need to divide it into 4 parts - part 1 - multiple choice, and parts 2 -4 each an individual assignment. Seems a bit confusing, but that's the best I have come up with.  Tell me you have a better way.  Cheers. 

New to boards - should I start another discussion for this topic?

[dhulsey]

Hi,  @paccioretti_tho ‌. You have two options for using Turnitin on quizzes. You can use a file upload question for all of the essays, or you can copy and paste the essay answers from the quiz analysis reports from Canvas. I explain these options in detail with video tutorials in https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/plagiarism/blog/2015/04/18/canvas-and-turnitin?sr=search&sear...‌. Maybe that helps? If not, let me know, and I will give it another shot! 

[paccioretti_tho]

Thanks Dallas.  I just viewed your TurnInIt videos - and gave you badges and points and everything.  Thanks for doing that.  

OK - cut and pasting 3 essay questions for 135 students - doesn't sound like a way I want to go.  The file upload idea - does that mean I create an assignment with the three essay questions in a docx. file that the students download, complete and then upload via TurnItIn?  OK - not bad, but that said - my speedgrader doesn't work and feedback is - well I don't know how I give feedback.  Feeling the instructure folks never taught a class and I've only been teaching for 3 years.  Huhrumph.  

[dhulsey]

Hey, Thomas! You do not have to cut and paste each response for each student. You download the analytics and copy the column in the grade book and paste it into Turnitin. The colummn will contain every student's response for that question. For three questions, you would copy three columns. If you randomize the questions on the quiz, it will be a few more than three.

For the file upload questions, I would attach a rubric to the quiz to evaluate the essay responses.

Having said all of that, if it is a proctored environment, I would deliver the multiple choice part of the exam in a quiz, and I would deliver the essay part of the exam as a Canvas assignment and hook the assignment to TII with the LTI. To protect the exam questions, I would not publish the assignment until the time of the  exam. Do the essays have to be part of the quiz?

[paccioretti_tho]

So the TII connects to the LTI with the PPE on top of the CCE for F2F with OBS?  Just a joke, only a couple years in still learning the acronyms - more than the military I say.  

OK - no the time to experiment with the analysis column grade book thingy - I'll look in to that for summer semester, thanks for the idea.  As the clock ticks down I'm going to do what I did last time - quiz, with M/C (see I'm learning) and essays questions in the quiz.  Just called CANVAS - they do a very nice job with customer service.  Nothing new to report on TurnItIn for quizzes - an essay question on a exam - crazy talk they say. ;0  Your suggestions are the best.  More badges for you.  Cheers.

[dhulsey]

Sorry about the abbreviations! TII is Turnitin, and LTI is Learning Tool Interoperability. LTI is the standard Canvas uses to connect to external tools and services like Turnitin.

Have a good weekend, Thomas!

[jcrawford]

Hey stefaniesanders ,

I have a teacher ( @avargo ) that is looking at doing something very similar for an employability grade in his class, but his question is what to do if a student is absent one day... How would you show that on the Rubric?  You don't want to give full points and skew the grade, but you don't want to give them zero points and penalize them for being absent.  Any suggestions?

[Stef_retired]

I'm not sure I understand the use case,  @jcrawford . The rubric solution is meant to give students points for being present (e.g. class is held on 20 days, student is present for all 20 days, the rubric has 20 rows of 5 points each—5 for each day—and the student is awarded 5 points for each day present, or the maximum possible points available of 100). Absent students would receive no points for that particular day (20 days possible, 19 days present; student earns 95 points out of 100). Would you clarify?

[avargo]

Hey Stefanie, thank you for responding so quickly. I am the teacher Jennifer referred to. Each day students are assessed on what we call employability skills. I have 4 categories that I score a possible 5 points, giving each student a total of 20 points per day / 100 points per week. Originally I thought it would work to create and copy the assignment each day and then I realized that I will have 45 assignments for a quarter class and 90 for a semester which could be overwhelming for students or parents to wade through. Ideally, it would be best to show one grade per week. So, I created a rubric with 20 criteria (4 categories for each day) with the possible 5 points awarded. This was working until I had a student with an excused absence for illness. Correct, I can't give a score if a student is absent but if he / she is sick for 3 days and has a doctor's note, it seems unfair to score them with a 40 / 100 just because they were ill. I noticed a thread about multi-day assignments and added my vote but (in this scenario) it seems that I need to be able to select a 3 day rubric for this particular student.

My thanks to you and to  @jcrawford  for taking the time to help my think this one through. I love the ability to give my students immediate feedback through a rubric. I was also looking to use this option to help with communication with parents. For students absent, I would send an email to the respective observers communicating about their son / daughters absence and potential make-up work. I hope this clarifies the question / scenario we are wading through.

[Stef_retired]

 @avargo , you've deployed a creative variance of the rubric solution, but it's also one that stretches it past its limits—since, as you know, you can mark an entire assignment "excused," but cannot do the same for a rubric row. I would imagine you could create a separate assignment for a student with an excused absence, attach a customized two- or three-day rubric for that assignment, and selectively assign that specialized assignment only to that student. Is that along the lines of what you were thinking?

[avargo]

Thanks Stefanie. @jcrawford  and I had the same solution in an earlier meeting. I have deployed this option and have found this to work well. Might look cleaner if / when the multi-day assignment becomes available but at least for now I have a workable option which does give me rubric scoring and real-time comments. Thanks for your help.

[ReidTulloch]

@avargo I teach CTE with students doing lots of independent work on various levels and I also grade heavily on Employability Skills. Does this solution using the rubrics still work for you? And does the solution given to deal with the students who are excused absent still work? Thanks!

[tinberc]

I like this alot, too. Thanks so much.

[terrie_hilbun]

Could you possibly show screenshots of how to do this?

[lac437]

Hi Stef_retired, can you say how you would do that again? I remain confused. 

I have a rubric which has a line for frequency of participation, quality of comments, listening skills, and remote instruction camera use (on).  The student is rated in each of these categories with points for zero participation, developing participation (10), proficient (20) and exemplary (30). 

where would the 26 rows go? 

I managed to make badges in the attendance log (one for no participation, one for developing, one for proficient and one for exemplary) to match the rubric, and then I see it tallies it up each day so that at the end it says how many times the student got exemplary badge versus no participation badge. 

PS this is a doctoral program. I find on Zoom, students don't participate so this is the first time I'm using class participation as a part of their grade.

Any more help is much appreciated!

[KristinL]

Hi  @bteo10 ‌ ~ It's been a while since we've heard from you! How are things going? Did you find a way to document classroom participation that worked will for your classroom? If so, please share! The Community would love to hear about your practices. If not, what's still challenging, and how can the Community help? We're looking forward to hearing from you!

[KristinL]

Hi  @bteo10 ‌ ~ I'm circling back to this conversation since there hasn't been any new activity in this thread for approximately three months. Because there haven't been any new comments or contributions for a while, I'm going to mark this question as "Assumed Answered" but that will not prevent you or any other Canvas Community members from commenting or reopening the discussion.

[cmd68]

Hello  @bteo10  stefaniesanders‌... I found this thread via a google search and am wondering if there are any new solutions to this question (how to grade daily participation).  I did create a rubric with 26 criteria (one for each day).  However, when I attempt to enter the grades after each class, all the scores from prior days are erased and I have to re-input them.  And if I'm keeping all my grades in Canvas, that certainly poses a problem.  Is there a better solution for entering daily participation scores?  My rubric is split into 26 criterion each with an identical set of 4 possible scores per day (10, 8, 5 or 0 points out of a maximum 10 points per day/criterion). In particular, I don't want Canvas to erase anything previously entered for previous criteria or the comments I wrote for that criteria.

Thanks!