[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

[scottdennis]

50% is better than nothing!

That shouldn't be the case, John.  If a quiz hasn't been published it shouldn't be showing in the calendar.  Have you referred this to support?  I'd be happy to take a look at it if you'd like to DM your course url. 

[mgill]

almost 15 months since the well articulated OP was created and this idea is not even on the radar that i can see. Does Instructure have a published list of their goals for Canvas and the reasoning behind them? what is driving the development process at Instructure? i would think the larger account institutions would be, but seeing folks from UM and UT posting about the same problems leaves me scratching my head.

we are currently in search of our next LMS, mainly due to this issue. fortunately for Instructure, the drive to not want to recreate all our classes and assignments is a strong reason to "stay the course". 

[Stef_retired]

 @mgill , our product development priorities are displayed on the https://community.canvaslms.com/community/ideas?sr=search&searchId=29fe00ec-0834-4b1e-8003-f5a2dda19...‌ home page, and you can learn more about the feature development process at https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-4396-what-is-the-feature-development-process-for-canvas?sr=...‌

[gharbor]

stefaniesanders‌ I have to say there has not been much coming back from Canvas as to why this feature has not gained any attention? Currently I have instructors who are having to build Quizzes & Rubrics not with a TASK in mind, but rather the TOTAL POINT WEIGHT in mind. Crazy!

[cesbrandt]

gharbor, I understand your frustration. This particular feature is something we've wanted since we first looked at Canvas, but it isn't a particularly difficult component to work around.

Instead of focusing on the points, we try to focus on the quiz. We'll load the quiz as if it were weighted, so it may come out to 25 points or 37 or 100. Only after the quiz is loaded to we go back to do a little math to update the point values:

points of question * 100 / total points of questions prior to changes = new points of question

So, say an essay question is worth 5 points and the entire quiz equates to 25 points, the final value of essay question would be 20:

5 * 100 / 25 = 20

It's far from ideal, but without having the native weighting, we find it much easier to simply go back over the numbers afterwards to adjust the total value up to 100. With quizzes, sometimes it doesn't come out as 100, sometimes it's 99.8, or 101.3, but we think it's close enough to get by.

As for the idea being addressed, this is partially brought on by Khaki. Every year Instructure pulls community members with varying ranges of positions to discuss and vote on what should be the priorities for Instructure for development in the coming year. While I think it's odd that this idea wasn't even on the list for voting last year, that's where it comes in. Of the ideas that were voted on, these were the ones that were given priority. It doesn't mean other ideas won't be worked on, and I don't pretend to speak for Instructure, but it's a very real possibility that this didn't make it into consideration because they had determined beforehand that it was too big to be worked on with existing priorities, or was already on their long-term plan.

[gharbor]

As you say, far from ideal. If you have a Quiz out of 23 points and then an assignment out of 30 and they have to be equally weighted you're stuffed.. I understand that with an assignment you can set it up to enter a percentage in the New Gradebook, but if you are using a Quiz or Rubric for an Assignment you can't.. 

Anyway, thanks for your detailed response.. 

Grant

[Stef_retired]

gharbor‌, in Quizzes.Next, since the tool is an LTI predicated on an Assignment (External Tool), instructors are able to enter a point total for the entire quiz rather than having to have the individual questions' points add up to a desired total. Please refer to How do I create an assessment using Quizzes.Next? If you're not yet participating in the limited beta, please contact your school's admin—and if you are the admin, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager (CSM) for more information.

[lfranz]

At my institution, we are transitioning to Canvas summer of 2018 ... and this issue has been pending since 2016 !!!!!!  I am beyond disillusioned that this feature has not been added in the LAST TWO YEARS!  As mentioned above, this is a NO BRAINER.  Get on this, Canvas Support team.  In the meantime, I see no option for me that to do the calculations myself in Excel and enter the results so my students can view them.  What do we have a computerized Gradebook for then?????

[maguire]

Has anyone considered exporting/import the whole gradebook and equations to compute grades - perhaps using LTI Assignment and Grade Services.  In this way one can built whatever computations one wants to have in an external tool. If the identifier for students is completely opaque, there should be no privacy issues.

Currently, I am looking at either doing this type of computation by getting the grades via the API and feeding it to code or generating a spreadsheet with the relevant equations generated in it.

[scottdennis]

Hi  @maguire ,

I remember in the days when I worked directly with faculty members during trainings, I think the spreadsheet option was used pretty commonly by people who wanted to push beyond existing functionality in the gradebook.