The way you have the "drop lowest grade" option is misleading as it's ACTUALLY "keep highest grades". An assignment group that has only 2 of 4 grades submitted should not be keeping ANY grades since the system should be dropping the 2 lowest (if there are only 2 grades submitted, they are automatically the 2 lowest). What your system is doing is instead keeping the x number of highest grades). When I asked support how to ACTUALLY drop the 2 lowest grades, the reply was that I just shouldn't enter those grades at all. This is obviously problematic and defeats the purpose of using a grade book.
The Moodle system would be a GREAT model for Canvas to follow. In their grade book, if you set it up to drop the 2 lowest scores, it actually drops the 2 lowest scores. There's no requirement to have a 3rd score. This allows for a larger range of universal design assignments that incorporate student choice. So, if I give my students 4 assignments but only require them to do 2 of them, a student who skips the first two is punished with 0s (that are kept not dropped) in Canvas's current system. This is obviously inaccurate and stressful for the student. A system that works would not count ANY scores until there are more than 2 (truly dropping the lowest 2). If an instructor wants to instead KEEP the highest x number, there could also be that option, which is entirely different from dropping low scores.
