New Quizzes should not *automatically* grade written responses

[elizabeth_jetto]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Any questions that teachers have to manually grade (essay, short answer) are automatically calculated as zeros in Quizzes.Next. There are 2 major issues with this:

     1. Student's grades are completely inaccurate until the teacher grades them. This can cause serious issues like suspension from a sports team due to grades, consequences at home, and unneeded anxiety and stress. Yes, I can mute the assignment so they don't see that grade at home, but administrators who are determining eligibility see it as part of the average. 

     2. Because Quizzes.Next considers this question already graded, as a teacher, I have no way of telling which responses I have graded and which I have not.  In the old Quiz system, it shows a document symbol in the gradebook and a little orange dot next to their name in Speedgrader to show that these questions still need to be graded.  When you are look at a specific student's quiz in Speed grader, it tells you what still needs to be graded, but still shows a check next to their name in the list, so you have to scroll through every student to see if it has been graded. With hundreds of students turning in assignments at different times this is not helpful.

Considering the old version has this, this is something that should have been fixed before it ever came out of Beta. It is a serious glitch in how Quizzes.Next interacts with the Canvas Gradebook. 

[djc29]

I see you've been flung onto the pile of identical complaints. Welcome to the club.

The treatment is so dismissive, and the process is so opaque, that I can't help but be convinced they don't actually care about what we have to say.

[bengaynor]

@megande Thanks for pointing that out! I haven't been able to figure out how to vote for features since they changed the page layout months ago.

[MarkO7]

In the new Quiz format there is some confusion when auto-graded elements are mixed with essay questions that need to be graded.  After submitting, the student sees a very low grade because it is auto-graded with the essays questions as 0 points.  It would be nice if either the auto-graded elements are separated from those that need grading, or if a note pops up saying it is not the final grade.

[PackC93]

I agree. Not only that, but it makes it REALLY hard to tell the difference between quizzes I haven't graded yet and quizzes that are missing or got a low grade.

[cartyaj]

This automated feature really needs to be changed. Please just have the notebook appear instead of a 0. This is very problematic for students and teachers, especially those that grade sync. 

[aboom]

Currently, in new quizzes if there are questions that the teacher needs to grade it automatically assigns a score of 0, or the score earned on autograded questions, before the teacher has graded it.  In classis quizzes, it does not assign a score and instead shows the picture of the paper meaning it needs to be graded.  It is frustrating for students and me as the teacher that new quizzes does this.  It should run like classic and not input a score until the teacher grades the needed questions.  It should also show the symbol it does for classic to let teachers and students know it is waiting to be graded.

[aboom]

Any idea when this will start to be implemented?  It looks like it's something needed and its been open for conversation for over a year.

[fffarzad]

I understand it's an LTI issue, but it doesn't make sense that the LTI is unable to give a correct response to an ungraded essay question. If it is able to flag the teacher at the top (in SpeedGrader) that Question #N needs to be graded, then it should be able to consider a "no score" for the whole test until it is graded by the teacher. I get that it may not be able to put the Quiz in the ToDo list, but if it can pass a score of zero to Canvas Gradebook, it should just as well be able to pass a score of nothing whenever an essay question is part of the Quiz. I can workaround this by setting a Default score of nothing, but this only works right after the first time a Quiz is taken. If a student is to retake a quiz, I won't actually know if they did or not unless I run through every Quiz again! This is not efficient at all. This issue is even worse than the inability to give partial points for matching or categorization or to format fill-in questions inside a table.

[flee1]

@aboom 

Don't forget to rate this topic with 5-stars (or however you wish). Comments and votes will get topics seen by Instructure staff quicker. Whether it will be implemented is a different story, but at least the issue will be seen.

[bschremp]

Agree this really needs to be addressed.  I have a quiz that is only essay, and the automatic zero is causing students a lot of unnecessary stress.  Current work around is: put on manual, hide grades and then as student responses come in, edit the score in gradebook view and  just delete the zero.

There's got to be a better way.