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.

[dicksonl]

Even with the new quiz score icon, a zero grade is still being calculated and factored into students' overall grades. The quiz icon appears to be a patch, not a real solution to the problem. Our students are still panicking when they submit an essay quiz and see their grades drop, sometimes fairly drastically.

I know that muting the assignment is a workaround for now, but are there any plans at Instructure to make essays (or other quizzes that require manual grading) not factor into overall grades when they haven't yet been graded by the instructor? Should I submit a new feature idea on this topic? Thank you!

[asatkins]

Hey erinhallmark​,

Was this the thread you were talking about? It was the only similar one I found. It seems like they were hoping for the same thing I was, to have the grade not just hidden, but actually not factored into their grade until the assignment is graded. Could this be reopened for voting? The prod fix did not address it.

Would that be  @biray ​? I'll just keep tagging people until I find the right Instructure person

For those joining us new, here is a screenshot of after the last prod release -

The student has 100% on her Canvas graded portions of each assignment, but because over half of each assignment is an essay question, she's showing as failing until those are graded. After they were graded she had a 100% in the course. There is a Q in the score column, it's just covered by custom CSS.

Thanks!

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi Amanda,

Yes, this is the correct thread. This feature idea was fulfilled in that quizzes with responses that require manual grading are not factored into the quiz score. So yes, if you have a quiz that was completely full of essays, then the quiz would not technically be considered graded until the instructor grades the essays and manually enters the scores. However, if the quiz is a mixed question type, Canvas will score the automatically scorable questions, so it's possible that the quiz would show as being only half graded, for instance. The Q icon shows instructors that they need to finish grading the quiz, and it also shows students that their quiz hasn't been graded so they can know they may still be getting more points.

If you're looking to have the quiz completely removed from quiz totals, that will have to be a new feature idea at this point.  @biray ​ can help more with the feature idea process if you need it.

Thanks!

Erin

[Renee_Carney]

 @asatkins ​, if you have a new idea, How to write a good feature idea submission​ is a great resource!

[asatkins]

Okay, fair enough. Thanks Erin!

[asatkins]

For anyone interested, here is the feature request for not auto grading partially teacher graded quizzes:

[awilliams]

After reading that feature idea, it sounds to me like the experience described conflicts with what erinhallmark​ stated as the intended functionality. I guess I have some testing to do...

[asatkins]

Hey Adam,

If I understand her correctly, I think Erin is saying there were two changes to this in the last prod release-

1. Fully and partially teacher graded assignments are now showing to the student and teacher as a "Q" in the grade book instead of a 0 or partial grade

2. Fully teacher graded assignments only are not factoring into student grades until they are graded.

So my example wasn't fixed by this last prod release because those first three assignments in my example were partially teacher graded, not fully. The fourth assignment in my example doesn't seem to be factoring in because it was 100% teacher graded.

Is that what you were seeing, or were you talking about something else?

[erinhmcmillan]

Amanda,

Assignments are always factored in to the student's overall grade, unless the assignment is excused. The Q icon just shows students that a quiz has not completely been graded, which is why their score may appear low and they shouldn't worry too much. The Q icon for instructors shows instructors they need to manually grade a question in that quiz.

Hope that helps,

Erin

[masuccm]

This was a positive change and made the grading more accurate. Thanks!