Remove the teacher graded portions of a quiz from a student's final grade calculation until they are graded

[asatkins]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea will be open for vote Wed. August 5, 2015 - Wed. November 4, 2015  Learn more about voting...

With the addition of the Q in gradebook for teacher graded and partially teacher graded assignments, it would great to see partially graded assignments not hurt a student's grade as they waited to be graded.

Here's my use case. This student took her first four assignments:

She had 100% on all of the Canvas graded portions of the first three assignments, but because around 50% of each assignment was teacher graded, it calculated a 0 for those parts of the assignment, even though it no longer displays those individual failing grades for her. It would normally show a "Q" there, but we had some custom CSS covering it, which is why it looks blank.

The kicker is this- at no point was she anywhere close to failing, and if Canvas did not count those "ungraded" elements against her, she would have 100% in this course. I would like to see ungraded elements not calculated until they are graded. So in this case, her gradebook would show 100%, 100/100 (as seems to be indicated by "Calculate based only on graded assignments") and then if she was give 0s on those teacher graded parts of the first three assignments it would recalculate to 62.5, 100/160.

Here is her grade book the next day after her teacher graded:

But for that day, her very first day in Canvas and her first day in our school, the feedback she received was that she was immediately failing, despite her perfect work. This is a third grader, so student and parent were understandably upset.

  Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2015-12-19)

Ungraded Quizzes and Student Grade Totals

When a student submits a quiz that has a manually graded component, the ungraded quiz does not factor into student’s grades view. Student grades are only updated when the manually graded question has been graded by the instructor.

[873179959]

Hi  @asatkins ​,  You make a good point that the system shouldn't give the student zeros for the ungraded portions, and have that affect the grade total.  But I hesitate to recommend that Canvas have the grade reflect even the part of the quiz that was graded.  If the student sees that they got 100% on those quizzes, but then once the teacher grades the other half, she only has an 80% on the full quiz, we will have equally upset students/parents.  I would suggest that Canvas just not calculate any part of that grade into total until the full quiz is graded.

[awilliams]

I agree with 873179959​. It should just ignore the graded item until the teacher has finished grading as if it were muted (hint hint the functionality is there).

[asatkins]

Here's my thinking with that. I would be happy with it either way, but I think the experience is more consistent with the wording of the UI if it factors the Canvas portion immediately and the teacher graded portion afterward. I also think that keeping the incomplete flag (the Q in the grade book) solves part of your concern.

My reasoning here is based on the option selected- "Calculate based only on graded assignments". In that world, if the student in my example got a 50/100 the 7th assignment, her grade would also go down, but that would be expected because it wasn't counting that 0 against her until she submitted the assignment.

So if getting a 50/100 brings the grade down, and that is expected and already happening, how is that all that different than if she got a 50/50 on the ungraded portion and a 0/50 on the essay? In that world I picture her grade for 1.1.7 showing as the Q icon and her total grade staying 100%. Once the Q icon disappears (when the teacher graded it) her total grade would go down (or potentially up, if the scores were reversed and she failed the Canvas graded portion and aced the essay) and she would get the feedback that her final grade is 50/100 for that assignment and be able to go see why.

I guess I see the problem as a different part of your statement -

"If the student sees that they got 100% on those quizzes, but then once the teacher grades the other half, she only has an 80% on the full quiz, we will have equally upset students/parents."

because I don't think the student should see it, I think the Q in the grade book should be retained. If the student has clicked into the assessment to see the incomplete score, then I would hope they've already realized that their grade might change and why. The benefit I see to adding in the incomplete score is to give the student as complete of a picture of their current grade as possible in those most important moments of immediate feedback. Younger students especially may never think of that assignment again, so the immediate feedback being as accurate as possible in terms of that score's effect on the total grade is important to us.

[admin_brake]

Students & Teachers expect the gradebook to be accurate, all the time.

Including a quiz score as zero into the Total Score, before it is graded creates an inaccurate score during that time between when the quiz was submitted & when it is graded.

Don't include quiz scores before they are graded.

Melody Brake - Colorado State University

[clong]

What if the quiz scores that need teacher grading are automatically muted? Teachers can override this at anytime if they'd like. Then once a teacher finishes grading they are unmuted.

[awilliams]

Yeah, I feel like the entire quiz should just be treated as if muted when there is any ​portion of it that needs manual grading. Any other way the information presented to the students is just misleading.

[cwruck]

Thanks for this feedback folks.

We're planning to add sort of a muted effect to the final score until the manual grading is completed. Basically, what awilliams mentioned: there will be no grade seen or calculated in the total score until the manual portion is graded.

I promise to keep you updated as that effort makes its way to beta and then production.

Thanks again for working with us to make this better!

[e01166]

Thanks for the suggestion. This is something we've struggled with in various LMS solutions. It seems that no matter how specifically you try to educate students (and parents in the K-12 world) that quizzes with essay questions will not show the final score until a teacher grades them, many just don't get it.

I like seeing the computer graded result immediately after I take a quiz/test.

Perhaps an indicator that would inform users that "Part of this quiz requires grading by the teacher" would be a compromise between some of the above mentioned solutions. The score might look something like 30/70*. (The asterisk, or some other designation, would suggest that something is different about that score. A mouse over on score would trigger a screen tip indicating that the grade is awaiting additional input from the teacher.

I am voting this up because I would like to see a solution to the issue being identified. I really can't say what the best solution is though.

[asatkins]

That is kind of what happened before, which was the problem for us. It did show 30/70 and in some places there actually was an asterisk, but it still counted that 0 against students in their final grade, which is incorrect and discouraging

[e01166]

I agree with you. Really, what is needed in the solution is to treat the grade as two different parts.  A CS (computer scored) and TS (teacher scored) grade. The problem with such a solution is that it would probably be pretty complex coding challenge.

Perhaps the muting of a grade until completely scored is the way.