[ARCHIVED] Negative Fudge Points Added Automatically?

[distance_ed1]

Hey folks! I've got a faculty member with a weird issue: SpeedGrader seems to have added negative fudge points to one of her student's quizzes without her knowledge! Have any of y'all come across this or seen any circumstances that would cause it? She's using the New Gradebook and has a late policy that deducts 10% per day late, if that makes any difference. Luckily, removing the fudge points fixed the student's score, no problem, but we'd rather avoid this issue in the future if we can!

Also, some notes:

• Do you think it's possible that the instructor added these accidentally and didn't realize it? Well, anything's possible, but in this case I find it highly unlikely. She's never touched fudge points before and had no reason to add any negative values to this student's score.
• Did you test any possible causes? I tried replicating the issue both in her course in our beta instance and in my sandbox course in our live instance but had no luck. I thought it might have something to do with her regrading fill-in-the-blanks questions, but nah.
• Why not submit a Canvas ticket? Notoriously unhelpful. Since we've already 'solved' the problem I expect the response will be highly underwhelming, as I've seen in the past with situations like this. Y'all here in the community have always been much more helpful!

All the best,
Danielle Casey

eLearning Program Coordinator

Lower Columbia College

[rmurchshafer]

Danielle,

I've never seen this happen before and it looks like you've done some good sleuthing already.  Have you tried look at the grade history?  In the New Gradebook you get there by clicking Gradebook, Gradebook History and then search for the affected Quiz and Student.  It won't provide an answer but could provide some additional clues about when it happen and if it was an automated process vs something entered by an instructor.  

Good luck,

Rick

[olsona]

Hello,

We had a faculty member experience the same issue and the Grades tool was not switched to the new one. To test it out I went into a sample student’s quiz in my sandbox that had a score 18. I then went into the Grades tool and typed a 0 for that student’s grade. I looked at the Fudge Points in Speedgrader and it showed -18 points.

For the actual course that had the problem, I did the same thing Danielle did and removed the fudge points and the 18 points came back. I looked at Grade History (thanks for the reminder Rick) and below is what I found.

The original score for the student on Nov. 1 was 18/20. Then on Nov. 18, it shows a score of 0/20. You can then see on Nov. 21 when I changed the score back to 18/20 by deleting the Fudge Points.

Date	Student	Grader	Assignment	Before	After	Current
Nov 21, 2019 at 11:44am	Student	Andrew	101 Quiz MLA	0/20	18/20	18/20
Nov 18, 2019 at 1:34pm	Student	Teacher	101 Quiz MLA	18/20	0/20	18/20
Nov 1, 2019 at 9:12am	Student	Not available	101 Quiz MLA	–	18/20	18/20

I suspect that a score of 0 was accidentally entered into the Grades tool.

Sincerely,

🙂 Andrew

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

We have a teacher experiencing this too, perhaps a new gradebook bug?  I will call support and ask. This teacher also has a late policy, but the fudge points don't seem to be related.  I checked the gradebook history and the only change was made when the teacher manually graded two items.  Before doing that grading, fudge points appeared but were not calculated into the total.  After grading, some points were subtracted but not in any clear way - and every time a change was made, more points were deducted.

I am going to call support.

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

Tech support was able to replicate the problem when I gave them all the specifics.  I'd figured out it happened when a quiz is being manually scored in speedgrader (manually graded items or just making a change), and there is a late penalty also being applied.  Finishing up by manually changing fudge points to 0 corrected the score to what it should be, and left the late points deducted, a good working fix.  Nonetheless, every time another change was made in scoring, those fudge points came back.  Definitely a bug that needs fixing.

[droussin]

Hi Nancy,

We have instructors also experiencing this. Can you please provide your case number for this issue? We hope that this case number will provide us a status of when we can expect a fix.

Thank you,

Deanna

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

Happy to, Deanna.  Case #05251672.  Please do add to the case - it still seems unsupportable that speedgrader will create incorrect results.  I have heard nothing since 2/24, it's on the back burner.  Maybe you can help bring it forward.

[droussin]

Perfect! Thank you! absolutely!

[michellemeazell]

Any update on this? I just encountered this but the instructors did not use a late policy in either instance. They were manually graded quizzes (math) and in one instance two students who had the points show up were taking it at a different time.  That's it.  The fact this has been out here a year and this is still a "bug" but the more years we are with Canvas the less faith I have that anything will get resolved or answered - especially in this new community and during a pandemic no less. Sigh. 

[sstenbec]

I just experienced this today 10/29/20. I'm new to Canvas since the pandemic began, so I'm still learning all the intricacies. When I made it to this thread, I was a bit surprised to find out this has been an issue for more than a year and it doesn't seem to be getting fixed.

It sounds like this is caused perhaps, when you enter grades manually, even though Canvas grades the quizzes for you. In my case I had two students who completed the test or almost completed the test just barely by the deadline, and may have been shut out before they hit the submit button. I don't have a penalty applied for late submission. The history shows the tests were graded accurately at first, but both scores changed to zeros at the same time the next day by being awarded negative fudge points equal to their scores. I do remember manually awarding zeros the following day to the students who had not taken the test. But since they had taken the test and they were already scored, I wouldn't have touched their scores. I don't remember if the time-stamp the change occurred is also the time I was entering zeros for the missing tests. 

Someone should fix this glitch. We shouldn't have to worry about this happening everytime we give a quiz.

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

@sstenbec do you have an automatic Missing Submission policy that assigns 0% for missing submissions? Do you see a Late or Missing label on the students' grades in the gradebook?  

I am wondering if the automatic submitting for students who were still working on the quiz at the Available Until date/time is triggering the missing submission policy, incorrectly.  It might be a good idea to contact Canvas support about this.

[sstenbec]

Hello Nancy,

My apologies for not seeing this until now. Just as a follow up to your question, no I didn't have the automatic deduction for late submission turned on, so I don't think that was an issue.

Scott

[tam_nguyenmaith]

Hi, our teachers have recently experienced this issue (11 Dec 2020). We use new gradebook. No late policy is applied. The fudge point value is awarded differently for each student (ie, 0.25; 0.22, 0.3).

The teachers confirmed they never touched on this field. The issue happens to more than 10 students in a course in different course sessions at the time of checking. The course has more than 1000 students. 

I am trying to contact the Agent for support but no luck. I hope to find the fix for this issue soon.

[sstenbec]

For me, the only time this has occurred was on tests where the student appears to have used all of the time allotted for the test and didn't finish and submit before they timed out. Canvas then awarded the exact amount of negative fudge points to equal their score, resulting in a zero for the test. I also did not have the automatic deduction for late submission turned on. 

It has only happened to me on one occasion.

This glitch seems to be very random. I'm not sure it will ever get solved/fixed.

[MrsGregory]

This is a definite problem with Canvas.  When this happened to me it happened to multiple students, so it was not my error.  I eliminated the negative fudge points and saved them and Canvas re-entered.  I think putting a 0 in the fudge points will fix it.  Now I have to go back and check all assignments all semester.

[bbennett2]

We're seeing this, too...not consistently, but I think our pattern matches others in the thread:

• Usually on Quizzes submitted late (after the due date, before the close date)
• The gradebook has a missing policy set (0%).

What I think happens is that a student starts the quiz and lets it run past the due date. Submitting the quiz scores and enters the grade. But, the missing policy overrides the quiz score, deducting the score completely (exact point value the student earned) and making a change in the gradebook. The instructor then has to set the fudge points back to 0 to regrade the quiz.

I wonder:

• Will turn off the late policy make a change? I'm not sure because several people here said they don't have a late policy active.
• Would changing the assignment status in the gradebook from Missing (automatically applied past the due date) to None do the score adjustment?

[nancy_blum]

I had a 60-minute Canvas exam open to my students from 9/22/2022 12 AM until 9/25/2022 11:59 PM (it's an asynchronous class so I wanted students to be able to take the exam when it was convenient for them). The due date and close date were identical, so no exams were submitted late.  There is no late policy active. No students timed out of the exam.

For all the exams submitted on 9/25/2022 after 6:30 PM (but not for any exams submitted prior to that), Canvas awarded the exact amount of negative fudge points to equal their score, resulting in a zero for the test. To fix it, I just had to set the fudge points back to 0 to regrade the quiz. I had never previously encountered this glitch, which affected about 17 of my students on this exam!

[RichardGelinas]

I had the same issue today, 10/21/2022. Anybody else bothered by Canvas not fixing this bug that affects student scores 2 years after the problem was identified?!

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

@nancy_blum and @RichardGelinas, since these are recent occurrences, do you have a support case?  I just checked my case that's been active since Feb 2020 and on Oct 19, 3 days ago, they closed it.  "Your canvas case was previously associated with a shelved engineering ticket and has been closed. A shelved status means that the team had postponed triaging the behavior; they have now determined that the reported functionality is not defined as a bug, or it will not be fixed."

I will try to get my case reopened, or a better explanation as to why it's closed, but the more people that report this as a bug will help.  It is discouraging that it's still happening; that students may have a wrong grade and we don't know it.  My old case is 05251672. If you have case numbers, would you share?

Thank you!

[nancy_blum]

I had opened a ticket with Faculty Technology at my university, but they closed it immediately because I had already fixed my students' grades without their assistance and they were stymied by the problem. Is there some way to file a case with Canvas more broadly?

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

I have an open ticket with Instructure, but they need a video of this happening.  They are unable to replicate the issue.  I sent a link to a quiz submission with negative fudge points having been added by the system, but without knowing how it happened, they can't proceed.  I am trying to replicate but so far no luck.  There is no late submission penalty, the submission was the third allowed and hours before the due date/time. 2 earlier submissions did not have negative fudge points.  Highest score kept, except fudge points actually kept the third submission from being the highest.  Questions are randomly chosen.

If anyone of you can make a video of the fudge points being given, show the exact circumstances, that would be helpful.