Combining two part exam for a single grade

[PhilLongstreet]

I teach a course where I have the students do a two part exam which I then combine into one score and then I drop the lowest exam grade of 3 exams. Thus my question is can this be done somewhat automatically in Canvas?

Structure: Exam 1 (Part 1) * 60% + Exam 1 (Part 2) = Exam 1 Grade

Course Grade: (Exam 1 + Exam 2 + Exam 3 - Lowest Exam Grade)/2 = Total Exam Grade

Currently, the best I have come up with is to create a dummy grade item (Exam 1 combine) and then manually calculate (in excel) the Exam 1 grade and put it in the Exam 1 combine. This is then used for the course grade where I drop the lowest exam score.

What I would like to do is to have canvas create the third column Excel Exam grade, by using the above weighting for the items but I haven't figured out how to do this.

Note: it is not possible to create the exam as a single part as the first part is question based in canvas, while the second part is exercise based in the Cengage SAM platform.

[Ron_Bowman]

@PhilLongstreet -

Well this is the perfect example of having assignment groups within assignment groups.  If that were possible this would be easy.

From reading the title, my first thought was to create an assignment group for each exam - each group has assignments for the 2 (or however many parts) for the exam.  You now have 3 assignment groups for exam1, exam2 and exam3.  Now to drop the lowest group would be where the group within a group would make it trivial.

If you use a weighted assignment group gradebook, then maybe the following is possible.  It would help if your students are older (you did not mention what grade level) to understand what you may have to do. 

In any case, as a "somewhat automatically" way to do what you want, create 4 assignment groups - 1 for each exam and 1 for exam grade - the exam grade group needs one assignment in it to hold the grade.  After you have all three exams, export the gradebook and use excel to generate the course exam grade using some basic excel formula techniques and  then import that grade into the course. Then just weight the 3 exam groups 0% and the exam grade group the correct weighted value.   You can always just have the exam groups already at 0% and then after every exam, update the exam grade based on the results.  That is after the first exam, the exam grade group would just have that exams grade.  After the second exam, you would have to average the two exams and use that as the grade.  Then after the third, you have to do the slightly more involved calculation for the exam grade.

If you are using a points based grade book, I have ideas, but I am not sure how it would work out

I hope that helps or provides the spark to solve your question.