[Assignments] Assignments within weighted groups treated with equal value regardless of points

Please excuse the verbose title.

 

Our faculty want the option to have assignments within an assignment group to be given the same weight even if they are graded on different point values.

 

For example:

 

Assignment Group = Homework  25% of final grade

 

Homework 1 10 pts

Homework 2 15 pts

Homework 3 10 pts

 

etc.

 

Currently, the homework #2 which is worth 15 points will have a larger influence over the grade than homeworks 1 or 3. We can encourage faculty to grade all assignments within a group on the same point-value scale, but there are 3,000 of them and four of us. Additionally, our previous LMS, Blackboard, allowed the user to opt to weigh all of the assignments WITHIN a group equally. Faculty are very upset by this lack in functionality ESPECIALLY when they become aware of the miscalculation right before final grades are due.

 

Thanks,

 

-Lea

82 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

 @b_figueira , this feature idea has been archived because it surpassed the necessary vote total to move forward to the next stage, and received a comment from the product team in April 2016 indicating that it is on the longer-term roadmap.

emeryki
Community Explorer

YES YES YES!!  Please make this happen 🙂  it is a huge time sink to convert each assignment grade into a percent before I add them to the grade book.  I have many assignments from students' lab manual that are all worth different point values.  Would love for this to get moved to the 'Short-term roadmap'.   Thanks!

jedington
Community Novice

I would like to add my support to this.  As a user or MyMathLab, this would be very helpful. I know that if I create assignments strictly in Canvas, I can weight each problem in a certain way, but it would be even easier just to allow us the option of having all assignments equally weighted, or more importantly, allow us to assign the weight of the assignments inside of category weighting. 
I for one hope this 'longer-term roadmap' has a fastlane!

kriles
Community Novice

This discussion is ridiculous. Just add the feature. If your infrastructure is too inflexible to handle customized weighting, then I will recommend to the University of Michigan administration that we consider other vendors. We had a system in place for years called Ctools that supported this capability. When we upgrade our software, we are supposed to get more options, not fewer. This is not rocket science - it's software. Just do it and stop fiddling around with silly voting systems.

Keith Riles

Professor of Physics

University of Michigan

brown_6316
Community Novice

I am with you Keith.  This whole discussion is a waste of time.  Canvas staff:  Get it into the software NOW!  This was a simple radio bottom in our old LMS.  Why should a software program control how many points my assignments and assessments should be for my courses?  This is absurd.  My "points" are dictated by how I would like to grade "individual" assignments, they have no relevance to separate assignments.  My syllabus dictates the category weightings for the entire course.  Each category has multiple items within it that are to be EQUALLY weighted, generally speaking.  Add customized weighting to your software now before we throw it away.  Very unhappy with this lack of functionality...

Michael W. Brown

Lecturer , Construction Management Program

The Ohio State University

kriles
Community Novice

Thanks, Michael. It's hard to believe a professional software company

is giving its users such a runaround. This request has been made by others

at least as early as January 2016 from what I saw on the forum.

Best,

Keith

On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 10:25 AM, brown.6316@osu.edu <instructure@jiveon.com

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team
  Idea is currently in Product Radar Learn more about this stage...
kriles
Community Novice

I clicked to learn more about Product Radar and concluded from it that Canvas is in trouble. The idea of allowing flexible weights has been around since at least as early as late 2015, yet the code developers apparently find this request too daunting to take on and won't promise to take it on anytime soon. As someone who writes computer programs as part of my research, I find this situation to be pretty pathetic. If I owned stock in Canvas, I would sell it. Unfortunately, my university has apparently committed itself (for now) to a company that has prematurely ossified.

hjackson1
Community Novice

This is a feature that I DESPERATELY miss from my previous LMS (D2L). It creates a large amount of additional work for me to convert all assignments to be worth the same number of points.

snelson6
Community Contributor

 @mevans1 ‌  @tcrandall ‌  @eoneill ‌ I think that this is something that Relay would want. I encourage you all to check it out and add your votes if you agree!