[Assignments] weighting in assignment groups

[jlamb1]

It seems this has been a reoccurring request for some time now, but is not generating the votes needed to get attention. Perhaps it is time to try again!

Canvas would benefit greatly from being able to allocate a weighting to individual assignments within an assignment group. At present, rather than an overarching "Geography" assignment group for HASS, I have to put each individual assignment in their own group to distribute task weighting for the course. HASS also covers economics, politics and history - that makes for A LOT of assignment groups to break up the weighting for tasks.

In my view, it would be much simpler to have the Assignment Group that aligns with the unit or module being taught and has a weighting for the overall course, and an individual assignment weighting function within the group without having to fiddle around with the points. I think most teachers would agree that there is enough of a workload without adjusting and readjusting points to weight assignments according to their worth. I for one wold love to be able to do this with a quick click of a button instead of laboriously pouring over numbers.

Please vote up on this - it is clear that many people are asking for this function in many different ways.

Gradebook: weigh assignment within assignment group

"Lock Grade" option in Gradebook

Weighting Assignments

[fidalgok]

I agree that it would be extremely helpful to be able to weight individual assignments within an assignment group. 

[NicLSim]

@ anyone from Canvas have ANY  updates on this? This has been requested for 4 years now. Original post was sent in from 2016. Is anyone listening?

[cmcdonald4]

This is something we definitely need, I have multiple schools that have used this in the past on our previous LMS and are asking for it.

[kjshedden]

This is important to our department and many others at Virginia Commonwealth University. This gradebook limitation has been problematic in our transition from Blackboard to Canvas.

[eoverton70]

In my previous use of Blackboard, we had the option of having grades weighted "proportionally" or "equally". This meant that for my 50 online assignments, all with different point values, I could weigh them "proportionally" within my "assignments" group.

However with my "exams" group, I had 5 exams. I could weigh those "equally" in that group.

Then for the overall grade for the class, I had assignments worth 30% of their grade, exams were 50% and 20% was written papers.

The key was being able to adjust the "weight" of each item within the "group" or category.

[jozua]

Agree with what has been said before. We really need this. The "points as proxy for weighting" is very clumsy and breaks in certain scenarios. 

Our challenge is that we want to use a single course shell for a year subject that has four distinct terms (and final portfolios). Terms and portfolios have overall weightings but various assessments inside a term need to have specific weightings.

We also have other courses that only last a single term. In these, the lecturer could use Assignment Groups weighting for other purposes, which leads to confusion. 

[Ron_Bowman]

I agree that this modification would be nice.  Because it has not been done yet and that it is available in blackborg (that is not a misspelling - I hate them with a passion for buying better lms's and then creating an inferior product in some terms) that blackborg has a patent on that feature in some way (blackborg does that with anything and everything they can).  So Canvas has to come up with some way to implement it that is not in violation of a blackborg patent(if there is one).

[MorneVenter]

I would love a more nuanced ability to create assignment weightings within groups.  

[cdunn4]

This does not need to be a Canvas feature. If a typical assignment is worth 10 points in an assignment category and you want double, make it worth 20, if 1/2 make it worth 5, if something else apply your own scale factor.

[jozua]

@cdunn4 using pt values as a proxy for actual weighting is not only clumsy, it can break in a number of scenarios. Example - if you use the traditional quizzes, the quiz determines the final point value rather than what you set it to. Similarly, you can create instability if you set a different point value on the Canvas assignment compared to something like an Google Assignments LTI assignment. In our experience, it also confuses students. If something clearly is out of 50pt, to then display it as 20pt for the sake of a weighting proxy is not ideal. Yes what you suggest is a workaround which we currently use, but it is just that, and it is not really a proper solution.