[ARCHIVED] Partial Credit for Matching Questions?

[robert_a_petrof]

Why can't students receive partial credit on the New Quizzes "Matching" questions?  If I have a series of questions on historical figures and the students match 4 of the 5 historical figures....they should get 4 of 5 points in the section.  It should not be an "All or Nothing" scenario.  At least give us an option....... 

[bbennett2]

This has come up in the past with classic quizzes acting the same way. If I remember correctly, the justification for no partial credit is that students can just select all choices and not face any penalty. It would require a mechanism for awarding credit for a correct answer while still subtracting points for incorrect. It's just a broad range of desires for these items and Instructure's stance has been to avoid it.

There are two solutions I offer my staff. 

If you use Classic Quizzes, you can install James Jones' fantastic QuizWiz modification on the account which gives you the option to allow for multiple answer partial credit. A button is added to the SpeedGrader that will give points for correct answers. We have this enabled for our staff.

If you're not an Admin, James' blog post has instructions on how to add QuizWiz using a Chrome extension that works great for individuals.

You can manually add partial credit for New Quizzes, but getting to the SpeedGrader is awful. To do this, go to your Grades and then find the assignment column. Click a student score then click the drawer icon. In the detail popout, click on SpeedGrader. That will open the student attempt in the grader and you can score each item there.

Neither is great, but they work.

[bengaynor]

@bbennett2 But we could offer partial credit in Classic Quizzes for matching (see screenshot). That feature shouldn't have gone away in New Quizzes.

[dheup]

Hello,

For Matching questions, a student can only select one answer out of the list, and the answer is either right or wrong. Which is why partial credit makes sense.

A (tedious) workaround would be to make a "Stimulus" question with the stimulus being one part of the matching question and then create separate questions for the second part. For example:

Stimulus:  Copy and paste the word to its matching definition.

Then add "Fill in the blank" questions for each definition.

[Hailstorm]

You are correct in classifying this as tedious!  I don't have time to deal with this problem.  It needs to be fixed.

[aloomis]

Aghhhh!!! I just gave my first quiz in Canvas and it was a map quiz. If the students miss one question they get 0%.  What the heck canvas!? Allow partial credit on a matching question! 

[kroy1]

Argh, I am so frustrated now!  Just made a 40 question test in new quizzes in which half are matching only to discover it is all or nothing.  Not cool, Canvas, not cool. Why in the world would you not allow partial credit in matching?  That makes zero sense for all or nothing to be the only option. 

[Hailstorm]

Agreed.  This is a serious problem that needs to be fixed.  I consider it important enough to be a required fix.  

[wendi_ward]

Very frustrated here too. Matching questions in new quizzes are already bad compared to classic quizzes. I can't match images anymore, and now I can't award partial credit. Why are features being taken away in new quizzes?

[Brian_A]

I have discovered the same issue with our teachers re. credit for multiple choice questions.  Is this an issue that is being addressed by the developers of New Quizzes?

Only way around it I can see now is to make each matching it's own question and then fill in the answers with distractors.  This might be a feasible option for a small quiz but with a larger one that won't be productive at all.  

[pcharles]

I am in the middle of an exam for 600 students and trying to figure a solution.  What I probably need to do is is convert the question to a fill in the blank and use pull-down menus or word banks and write them using that method.

Having said that, the "fill-in-the-blank" question type is another that has been downgraded from classic to new.  Sure, there are a couple of new grading options, but we have lost all ability to mix pulldown menus with formatted text.  This is another question type in need of a desperate and quick fix. 

It is bad enough trying to write Fill-in-the-blank from scratch, but it is even worse for anyone who imports them because if you look at them they look fine, but when you open them or assign them to students all the formatting is lost because someone decided to separate the formatted text from the answer text.  When you move chunks of text to the formatted area, that text is no longer visible in the unexpanded view of the question, so you cannot tell what the question is.   The analytics also become useless because you cannot tell what question each analytic is related to. You just get blank boxes.  Huge mess. 

[SarahMorren-Kim]

I ended up doing the same as Brian_A. I was able to duplicate each question and then swap out distractors for the answers.

[Johnsto1]

I agree it should be we should have more but I also think it's just getting us ready for this type of fast pace industry and it helps us@ in the long run .

[pcharles]

Several question formats migrated from Classic Quizzes no longer support features in the classic quizzes.  Partial credit is just one of them.  I do not understand why new quizzes lacks features in the old quizzes.   Hopefully this is just an oversight and can be fixed quickly without too many other problem.

Categorization questions are also like this and need to be fixed ASAP!!!

[cbutterw]

We changed to Canvas from Blackboard. Some aspects of Canvas are quite refreshing, but there are a number of inadequacies with Canvas and this is one of them!

Please sort this out.

[EricWilliams]

Getting ready to give a Unit Test with several matching sections. Since partial credit is obviously not working, which option lends itself to more user-friendly grade adjustment: classic quizzes or new quizzes?

I know that I will have to go one-by-one through the tests and adjust scores, just want to make sure I'm making my job as easy as possible.

[bengaynor]

The workaround I have found as of now, but it's far from perfect, is to create the questions as fill-in-the-blanks with dropdown menus or wordbanks*. Fill-ins do give partial credit.

It could look something like this:

*A note about wordbanks: When you're making the quiz, it'll ask you to write at least two options for each blank, one correct and one incorrect. It will then place all of those at the bottom of the question to be dragged and dropped into the correct blank. However, if the student clicks on the blank, a dropdown appears with just the options for that blank. If you write 10 questions with 2 options (1 correct, 1 incorrect) for each blank, you end up with 20 words at the bottom, but if a student clicks on a particular blank, they'll only see the two options assigned to that blank. We think this is because drag-and-drop doesn't work on mobile. The workaround for this is just to be sure to have 3 or 4 valid options for each. Many students won't realize they can click for a more limited list.

[pcharles]

Yep, I ended up converting all of my matching questions to fill in the blank.  Now that I am getting more comfortable with REGEX I am making decent progress,  but we should not have to do that.  The "New" quizzes should not be less functional than the "Old" quizzes.

[Steven_S]

@bengaynor  That is an excellent and easy to miss point, that students will see the options for each individual blank (omitting options from other blanks) in a drop-down menu even if "word bank" is the selected option.  An important related point adding the correct response  for blank one as an incorrect response in blank two (and vice versa) creates seemingly identical options in the word bank, however only copy of the same word will be accepted as a correct response.  The other copy is not recognized as correct.  That means only other distractors, that are not correct answers to other blanks, should be added as incorrect responses for each blank.

[tom_gibbons]

Building on this idea: 

I've created FiB questions that sort of mimic matching, but without the word bank limitation. I set up the first FiB as a drop-down answer type, create only one blank using the item for position one, add the other information that would be in position two as text, and then add all of the other options that will go in position one as distractors.

Then, duplicate the first question. Change the answer to a different item in the list, swap out the rest of the text, save. Rinse and repeat. You're still copying and pasting/composing as much text, but you're just breaking it up differently. Here's an example. This question was originally part of a 15-item matching question. Now there are 15 FiB questions with a list of 15 possible answers that are the same list for each one. And I only had to make the answer list once. 

 

Which isn't to say that I wouldn't prefer a "partial credit" checkbox for matching questions. Because I would. This is a workaround, not a solution, particularly when we're looking at a required migration from Classic to NQ in the future. I don't want to have to recreate previously-created matching questions. 

[ericmueller]

Someone needs to add this feature for voting if it hasn't been already.

[Steven_S]

@ericmueller  The idea is here:https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/New-Quizzes-Partial-Credit-for-Matching-Questi...

[jauntingsofjess]

This is frustrating. The old quizzes allows for partial credit, but not the new quizzes. While I can go into each students' assessment and manually adjust points, that is so much more time consuming. Will this be updated soon?

[Steven_S]

It is on the roadmap for progress this year.  You can view and respond to the roadmap blog here: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/The-Canvas-tl-dr/Quizzes-Planned-Priorities-and-Roadmap-2021/ba-p...

[morrison1]

This is a first-class cluster and must be fixed.  I think most people want credit given for each correct match.  I found this out as a "surprise" in a production setting and take an extremely dim view of it.  

[SarahWhitehead]

Yes- a big problem!  There is no reason for this to be like this!  I get subtracting points for wrong answers (to the extent that sometimes wrong answers add up to zero for the whole question even if students get some answers right)-- but if students have 10 matching and they miss one, there is no way it should be a zero.  These types of questions exist in ORDER to give partial credit.  Please fix!

[j_hornick]

I 100% agree this needs to be fixed. Allowing students to retake the quiz will help, but that is onerous for the students, especially in the case where it is a long quiz.

I don't see on the current roadmap where it is going to be addressed any time soon, though, which is a shame.

[idefeo]

I just redesigned my final exam because I learned that new quizzes matching gives all or no credit. After grading essays all the semester, the last thing I need is an online exam that I have to manually tabulate for each student.

I really hope Canvas rethinks and redevelops this.

[pallen5]

I am so disappointed in software companies like Canvas, especially since I teach Software Engineering.  To give community forums like this is a cop-out to hearing your users' struggles.  There is no evidence at all that Canvas sees or cares about these issues.  I, like everyone else on here, just gave a quiz in Canvas, and am finding out that students are getting 0 points on a 10pt matching question, when they only missed 2 of the matching.  This can't makes sense, to anyone.  Every time I think, OK, I'll try to use Canvas for that, I regret it. 

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

@pallen5 ...

Hello.  I'm not sure if you follow the Canvas Release Notes here in the Canvas Community or not, but I think you'll be happy to know that partial credit on matching questions is now available in New Quizzes.  In fact, it was released this past Saturday, January 15th, as part of the Canvas Release Notes (2022-01-15) - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com).  Now, I'm not sure if your school has yet enabled New Quizzes in your Canvas environment, so this would certainly be a question you'd want to ask your school's local Canvas administrator or someone from your school's Online Learning/eLearning department.  (Not all schools have chosen to "flip the switch" yet for New Quizzes.)  Also, it's worth noting that if you are still using current Classic Quizzes, Instructure (the folks that make Canvas) isn't doing any more development on Classic Quizzes.  This blog post, Classic Quiz Sunset Timeline (Subscribe!) - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com), shows the complete timeline for New Quizzes and the end-of-life for Classic Quizzes.

Also, here is a Guide for you to look at which describes partial credit in more detail for matching questions: How do I create a Matching question in New Quizzes... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

I hope this information will be helpful to you and others who have participated in this thread.

[CameronMcCraw]

Did you ever find a way around it? and yes to the community thing because I would like to chat with someone.

[bengaynor]

There was a Canvas update not long ago, and it's now possible. When creating a matching question, there's a button to choose whether you want to make it all-or-nothing or award partial. See image below.

This is not an option for categorization questions, which are still all-or-nothing.