Quizzes with an Essay Question Should Not Be Automatically Graded

[masuccm]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas  Learn more about voting...

  Idea will be open for vote Wed. July 1, 2015 - Wed. October 7, 2015  Learn more about voting...

I have assigned a Timed Essay to my students. Once they complete the essay, Canvas is putting a zero into the grade book, bringing the students' grades down. Of course, the students do not understand why this is happening.

Even if I mute the assignment, the category still records the zero, which affects the grade.

The only option I've had is to put the assignment in a new 0% category. The quiz is still graded, but at least it doesn't affect the student's grade.

Of course, this requires me to remember to move it back to the category once I've graded the exam.

This is entirely unnecessary.

There should be a feature to turn this off. If a quiz has an essay or short response, no grade should enter the grade book.

Honestly, the way it's done makes no logical sense.

  Response from Instructure

Hey All, Please see the Canvas Production Release Notes (2015-07-18)  for details. We've added a Quiz icon in the gradebook until the manually graded items have been graded. I hope this helps meet your needs and please let us know if there something more we can do to make this a better experience for you and your students.

[ccalderon]

I am definitely going to bookmark this for voting in the next round. This is a source of confusion here on our campus as well. The zero grade implies that the student has actually earned that score, when in fact the grade just has not been entered. Also, as  @masuccm ​ points out, it brings down the student's overall grade for the course, which can have greater implications in situations where regular grade/GPA checks are required.

[873179959]

We are having the same issues.  Students panic seeing artificially low grades on the quiz, and we use AspirEDU for student analytics and advising, and the students show up on Dropout Detective because it looks like they have failed a major exam in the course.

I'm trying to think through how I would like this to work logistically.  If the quiz has a mix of short answer and multiple choice questions, I would like to preserve the capability to have the multiple choice questions automatically graded, but as  @ccalderon  and  @masuccm  pointed out, I don't want it to be entered in the gradebook and have it affect the students' final grade until the rest of the quiz has been graded.  Is there a way to have the system automatically grade and display the points for the multiple choice questions in Speedgrader, and then once you have entered the points for the short answer questions, the grade appears in the gradebook?  Of course, you would also want the gradebook to indicate that a submission has been made but not yet graded (perhaps the Quiz icon would show up in the box, as happens when discussions and assignments are submitted).  Deactivated user​ gave an awesome presentation at InstructureCon 2015​ about the future of Speedgrader and the Gradebook.  It sounds like there will be more options to select different statuses for different assignments.  Maybe this functionality will tie into that.

[mlewis23]

There is a 'work_flow_state' field in the quiz submission API data. This field can have a value of 'pending_review'.  I have not tested this at all, but this field might be able to be used by Dropout Detective to leave off a quiz until the whole quiz has been graded.

[mlewis23]

My understanding of the 'mute an assignment' is this should work. By muting the assignment, the grade of the assignment should not be visible to the student.  The instructors gradebook will still see the scores and the impact on the student grade, but the student view of their own gradebook should have all elements of the grade hidden.

[Beth_Young]

Yes, unless something has changed within the past month or two, muting the assignment hides all aspects of the grade from the student, but not from the instructor. The instructor will see the grade factored into the totals etc. as though the essay questions had earned a zero, but the student won't see any grade anywhere.

I found this out when a student asked me about his course grade. His gradebook was showing a different point total than mine, and the reason was that I had muted an assignment with some ungraded essay questions on it. Once I graded those questions and unmuted the assignment, we were back in sync.

[masuccm]

While it's good to know that students can't see the grade, overall it is not very useful to me as the instructor. It's not an accurate reflection of the grade and makes having a conversation with a student about his or her grade impossible.

If a student contacts me and his or her grade is different than what is displayed to me, we're going to spend half our time trying to figure out why the grades are different.

Also, I will not have an accurate grade displayed to me, so it makes it more difficult to make decisions. What if I drop a student from a course based on bad information?

There is no reason that quizzes should be graded this way. It's confusing for all end-users. Not only that, but from some of the comments upthread, it seems to confuse advising programs as well.

Honestly, this should be an easy fix in the programming. If an essay question is included, do not grade.

[Beth_Young]

If a student contacts me and his or her grade is different than what is displayed to me, we're going to spend half our time trying to figure out why the grades are different.

Yep, that's pretty much exactly what happened with me! I will be voting for this feature idea when it opens up.

[cwruck]

873179959​, your suggestion was implemented in our most recent Beta release. Please see the Canvas Beta Release Notes (2015-07-06) . "When students complete a quiz that includes a manually graded question, the Grades page displays a Quiz icon instead of the current score, indicating that the quiz score is not yet complete. When students hover over the icon, students can view a message indicating that grading is in progress."

[kmeeusen]

This will be a good change.

This does not really have that big of an impact on me or my students, because I explain how this works for my students in my orientation materials, and I typically grade these items immediately after submission (unless late at night, then they are graded the next morning) so students see the correct scores very soon.

[Renee_Carney]

Canvas Production Release Notes (2015-07-18) - Please take a look at Incomplete Quiz Score Icon