[New Quizzes] Expand regrade/partial-credit grading to be as flexible as "fill-in-the-blank" questions
The regrade and partial-credit options in new quizzes are completely dependent on the question type. Some questions have incredibly flexible regrade and partial credit options while others do not. While other question types offer more unique advantages (like categorical or formula questions), I have found the flexibility of the regrade and partial credit opportunities of fill-in-the-blank to outweigh the advantages of almost any other question type.
The fill-in-the-blank (FitB) is the most flexible in terms of regrade-flexibility while also allowing partial credit. They...
- Allow regrades. Many question types do not allow regrades beyond throwing out the question (like Formula). For those questions, you must either toss the question or manually regrade all submissions.
- Allow you to completely change the answer or accept alternative new answers as a regrade option. Some questions that allow regrades do not allow this level of functionality or you must submit multiple regrades with "accept all previous answers" as well.
- Award partial credit. Other questions (like categorization) do not award any partial credit even if a student gets the answer mostly correct.
- Award sensible partial credit. If a student gets 3/4 of an FitB correct, they get 75% of the points. For multiple-select (the only other question I'm aware of that grants partial credit), the calculation is more punitive (to prevent students from checking every answer).
- The only feature it is missing is the specific-partial credit assignment that multiple choice (MC) allows. FitB defaults to automatically distributing points evenly among all FitBs within a question. MC allows you to assign partial credit to specific responses, which is situationally useful.
The regrade flexibility means that I can easily correct any mistakes in my keys after-the-fact. The partial-credit means I can reward students incrementally for questions where that is valuable and useful. I almost entirely write exams as combinations of multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank now. This works because you can re-write almost any question as a FitB. Numeric? No problem - you can even specify units and exponents. Categorization? Word bank. Multiple-Select? Reusable word bank.
The administrative advantages provided by Fill-in-the-Blank (FitB) questions have been articulated above. Expand the regrade flexibility and partial credit options of FitB to all other question types.
New quizzes is so great and powerful in so many ways, but falls ludicrously short in others. It is frustrating to use a cool question type in an exam only to encounter unexpected and/or irreversible behavior after 200 students have taken the exam. The structure of FitB is just so flexible and amenable that it makes using other questions almost pointless by comparison.
instructor,designer
