[ARCHIVED] Roll Call (Attendance) Points and Weighted Assignment Grades

[murphy_1527]

I am working with an instructor who is teaching hybrid course. Students meet 29 times during the semester and get 1 point for each time they show up.  Attendance is worth 5% of the grade. We are using Roll Call for this.

I have set it up so that:

1. I am using Weighted Grading in Assignments index page  and have a category called Attendance Participation worth 5%.

2. The assignment - Roll Call, is in that category - see image

3. I have edited the assignment so that it's worth 29 points. Again, one for each time they show up to class.

When the TA entered the attendance for the first time, instead of it taking off 1 point for those that did not show, it took off 14.5points. My understanding of how Roll Call functions is that students start with the full point amount - in this case 29 - and should see a single point deduction for each of the 29 sessions they missed.

Am I misunderstanding something?

[gpillsbury · Accepted solution]

Roll Call doesn't know how many sessions you're going to have - if you think about it, you only entered a maximum point value and didn't tell it anything about the number of sessions.  So, in the gradebook, it divides that max value (29) by the (number of sessions + 1) that you've actually scored.  In your case, you've scored one session and so, for those who didn't attend it, 29/(1+1) = 14.5.  When you score the next session, the equation will be 29/(2+1), and so someone who's never shown up will be down to 9.6 pts. Someone who's shown up one time will have 19.3.  The numbers will continually fluctuate like that because there's no connection to the number of sessions. I assume that when someone misses all 29 sessions, Canvas will have to round down 29/30 to display as 0.

[murphy_1527]

@gpillsbury Thanks for the reply and explanation. I do see what you are saying but I have to say that is the most jankiest design ever 🙂 (OK, not "ever" but....)

It would make much more sense, for both a student tracking of their attendance and an instructor view, to be able to set points-per-class or session. I get the math behind it and now, thanks to you, understand how it functions, but (in my mind) that's not particularly intuitive. It's also not explained clearly anywhere in the Canvas guides (that I could find).

Thanks a million for your help. I will decide if I want to submit it as an idea. 

[gpillsbury]

Happy to help, and I totally agree with you on the unintuitive nature of the tool!  Took me awhile to figure it out when professors first started asking about it.  It definitely feels 'half-baked' without the ability to specify the dates that one plans to take attendance in order to make the grading more recognizable.

[murphy_1527]

@gpillsbury 

I just noticed something.

The zoom attendance report is attached. 

Here are the days he counted towards attendance:

1. 8/25
2. 8/30
3. 9/1
4. 9/8
5. 9/13

A student that attended all sessions should see 29/29. I see this in the score that first student of the first student, seen in this image:Student B missed one day (8/30). I would expect to see 23.2, but instead I see 28.13 - a different value, entirely, plus two decimal places. 

Here is Student B's attendance report as pulled from Zoom:

I also pulled Student C. Student C had three absences (out of 5). I would expect to see 17.4 in the Canvas Gradebook. 

 I have played around with displaying grades as "points" or "percentage" and while that does change the display, it does not seem to effect the calculations. 

Any idea why I am:

1. Getting that score and
2. Seeing two decimal places?
   1. Can I control this?