[New Quizzes] Partial Credit for Multiple Answers WITHOUT Penalty

[NicLSim]

Please offer the option to restrict students' answer selection to X number of choice selections and offer partial points for correct answers ONLY without deducting points for incorrect answers. The penalty option right now is killing my student scores! 

For example: I have a 2 point question that requires students to select 4 answers (each being worth 1/2 point). A student will select 4 answers but only 3 of them were the correct answer. They SHOULD receive the 1.5 points for the correct answer. But instead they receive only 1 point. 

If the issue is the half points- then please correct this and allow half points, or let US KNOW THAT THE SYSTEM WON'T CALCULATE HALF POINTS!

[joel_ostblom]

@Renee_Carney  @Stef_retired To be clear, the new quizzes do not work as suggested in this feature request. Currently you get minus points for incorrect answers, this suggestions is to have an option that gives plus points for avoiding to select incorrect answers.

As an example, if there are 2 alternatives, 1 correct and 1 incorrect, the maximum amount of points should be 2 and you get that score if you select the correct alternative and avoid selecting the incorrect alternative. If you select both or none, you should get 1 point. If you only select the incorrect alternative you should get 0 points.

This works the same as a bunch of True/False questions grouped together, which I think is the most intuitive both for instructors and students. Currently, I have multiple students ask me about the  scoring on multiple answer questions after each quiz although I have put an explanation in the quiz instructions, so it is clearly different from what is expected.

What is required to move this into development or at least hear from the canvas team what they think of this? When looking at the current ideas in development, they all have less votes or a lower rating than this one.

[Stef_retired]

@joel_ostblom 

Our developers have just put the finishing touches on their plans for 2021 and will soon be updating the Roadmap - Canvas Community page. That said, a recent idea that requests brand-new functionality for the new quiz tool is not likely to be developed before those that have already been prioritized for development, and please keep in mind that since "votes" did not transfer from the old forum into ratings on this one, the ratings that display on existing ideas do not necessarily reflect the full extent of their support over time.

[joel_ostblom]

Thanks for the the swift reply @Stef_retired ! Is there any way I can see the total votes including the old forums votes anywhere? I have been hoping to see some of the most voted features here implemented, like these two from a couple of years ago:

• https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Partial-Credit-for-quot-Matching-quot-quot-Cat...
• https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Partial-Credit-for-Matching-Questions-in-Quizz... 

But now that you mentioned that there are older votes elsewhere, I would be curious to see these so that we can know how many issues are ahead of the top ones in this forum.

[Stef_retired]

@joel_ostblom 

There isn't a place here to view the vote totals of older ideas, Joel, but please keep in mind that ratings (or votes) are not nearly as important a factor as would be ideas with a large number comments and use case examples provided by a spectrum of users at different schools—so one shouldn't place great emphasis on Idea Conversations alone. Please read through What is the feature development process for Instructure products? to learn more about the sources from which our product teams derive feedback when developing their roadmap.

Thanks!

[joel_ostblom]

Thanks @Stef_retired, it's great to hear that comments are important, I will keep adding comments with use cases when I can. Those two Ideas I linked above are about the same issue and have over 240 comments together, which is the most I have seen for any Idea, so I am hopeful they will be considered for implementation soon. 

[aboom]

At the moment new quizzes allows for exact match or partial WITH penalty.  There really needs to be an option for partial WITHOUT penalty as stated here.  I don't want students to get docked points for selecting wrong answers or not selecting the right ones.

[olsonjisu]

I completely agree that this should be changed for multiple choice options with multiple correct responses. Otherwise, the grading system does not make sense to students and ends up being quite unfair.

[JohnnyProut]

Hello, I am a student at the Ohio State University. I was told to leave a comment here by someone at my schools Carmen Help desk. In the past week I have found three inconsistencies in the grading Carmen has given to me and other students.

In one class, we were asked a question with four answer choices. Two of the answer choices were correct. I chose one correct and one incorrect answer choice. Meaning that I should be given fifty percent of the credit for the question, instead I was given a zero or zero percent of the credit. I spoke to the teacher and they said that Carmen, unlike other software, grades up from zero. Where two correct answers would have gotten me one point. Having only one correct answer gets me zero points because, as she explained, the one correct answer gives me half of a point while the incorrect answer gives me negative half of a point which adds up to zero. My only problem with this is that if I chose both incorrect answers I would be given a zero or zero percent, not a negative one or negative one hundred percent.

In another class, me and other students say a similar problem with the Carmen software discrediting students the proper point values they deserve for their answers. This specific problem occurred with two different questions. Both had six answer choices, and we were tasked with picking three. I, for both of the questions, selected three but only two of mine were correct. I should have been given sixty-six percent of the credit for the questions, but I was instead given thirty-three percent of the credit for the questions. This means that carmen is not an all-or-nothing questioning platform and instead works with answers being worth a double-negative to the students. This is extremely unfair to the students.

I have raised this issue to both of the teachers of these courses and the TA's as well. They all say that this is how carmen does it and they cannot do anything about it. Is this true? Outside of individually going through everyones grades and changing them, is there anything they can do? Also is there anyone that I can specifically bring this issue up to? Whether it be a representative or developer?

Thank you,

Johnny 

[cdoherty]

I think the difficulty with the 'no penalty' idea is in the implementation. If you were only to give points for correct answers, what's to stop students from selecting all answers to get full points? An instructor at our university made a request for a grading scheme that I think is a solution. She asked that each answer selection be scored as if it was a true/false (the student made the right decision about if the answer is correct or incorrect). Let's say there are 4 answer selections, 2 are correct, 2 are incorrect. The point value for the question is 4 points, so each answer selection is worth 1 point. If the answer is defined as correct and selected by the student, that's one point. If the answer is defined as incorrect and not selected by the student, that is another point. The end result is that students will get partial credit for the amount of correct selections they make and not have their score set to 0 by making incorrect selections.

[kerstin]

Currently we have to spend time to manually go into individual exams to correct the "penalty" for an incorrect answer to a multi-answer question. We would very much like to have the option to provide credit for correct answers and "zero" for incorrect answers.