Equally weighted assignments of different point values

[jberez]

Hi,

I've run into what I consider to be a lack of fairly basic functionality in Canvas grading. While I quite like the features of assignment groups, in that they let you create weights for each group much like a typical syllabus would be structured, there appears to be no way of weighting the assignments within a group.

For example, if I have a "Homework" assignments group weighted 40% overall, and I have 10 homework assignments in the group, each assignment much have an identical amount of points to be equally weighted within the group, that is if I want each to contribute 10% to group. To accomplish this I have to engineer each assignment to be exactly the same number of points which I find to be quite limiting and difficult to accomplish. It can result in calculating fractional point values for individual questions, etc., all to find our you have to recalculate due to minor restructures in an assignment -- it's also quite a time sync on my part.

The only ways I see around this are (1) make all assignments in a group 100 pts and manually enter assignment grades as percentage values out of 100, after converting their inherent points value to a percentage (2) making a separate assignment group for every individual assignment to control weighting which is clunky and fails to utilize the elegant tool of assignment groups or (3) painstakingly engineer all my assignments in a group to have the same point value.

A very similar issue as to mine was previously raised in another thread, dated 2018. Just wanted to do what I can to raise this issue again in the hopes of future functionality in this aspect. Thanks, -Jaime

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Question-Forum/How-to-give-assignments-equal-weight/m-p/17...

[KristinL · Accepted solution]

Hi @jberez  -

Thank you for sharing your point of view with the Community. Other Community Members have shared a similar use case, and there is an open Idea Conversation that aligns: assignment weighting in assignment groups 

The more Community Members share in that thread, the more information will be there for Instructure's Product team as they look for future projects. What is the feature development process for Instructure products? 

[jberez]

Understood, thanks for sharing.

[klemons]

What is the status of this?  I went to the thread and there was no option to vote up or even make a reply.   It seems as if there are many threads about this same idea.   What should I do to add my input on the issue. 

I believe this is a CRITICAL missing piece in Canvas.  Especially in the areas of math and science homework platforms like WebAssign, MyLab, Edfinity, etc.  You make it so that we can sync our courses and bring over grades from these homework systems, but we CANNOT (in most cases) control the number of points on our assignments in those platforms so one assignment might be 13 points and the next 21 points, etc but we want them all to be counted equally in Canvas.  It is absolutely unacceptable (and defeats the purpose of having a one stop gradebook in Canvas) if we have to go in and created a 100 point assignment for EVERY one of those synced assignments then either manually calculate the percentage for each one or export to excel.   

I cannot understand how this is not a feature of the Canvas gradebook. We should have the ability to (at a minimum) at least say that we want all assignments in a certain group weighted EQUALLY. 

[Chris_Hofer]

@klemons ...

The process for voting on Ideas and leaving comments on those ideas has changed a bit this past year.  Ideas are open for voting only two times a year...as detailed near the bottom of:

How do Ideas and Themes work in the Instructure Community?

The Idea that Kristin had linked to:

[Assignments] weighting in assignment groups - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

...is part of a larger Theme called:

Within this Theme, you'll find a list of "Referenced Ideas", and the Idea I also linked to above is currently listed 4th from the bottom of that list.

You might also want to review the document: How do I participate with themes?.  And, I believe Kristin's link to the What is the feature development process for Instructure products? still provides some good insights on how Instructure determines what should go into development...based on a number of factors...including user feedback.

Hopefully these links will help clear up how the voting process now works.

[ThereseMyers]

Hi there,

To echo previous questions over the past 8+ years, not having the functionality to weight individual scores within an assignment group is extremely limiting.  

This functionality really needs to be added!

--Therese

[lpotts01]

seems this has been a commonly requested feature revision for many years now. so has this feature been updated? I see it says it needs upvotes but am not sure how to do that...is that just by liking?  In some ways it almost defeats the purpose of having groups since you have to separate them all out or make all assignments the same point value (which is the reason to use weighting in the first place...to avoid needing the same point values)

[orwinr]

Hello @lpotts01. As @Chris_Hofer pointed out in the post from 8/20/2023, things have changed in how upvoting works in the community. New ideas get added to a theme and then internally, folks at instrucutre decide whether that theme should be opened up for voting twice a year, for 30 days, once in February and once in October.

When you vote for a theme you are voting for a much larger process that includes many ideas that are lumped together and if that theme is deemed worthy, it will go into development and many of the ideas in that theme will be developed together. This idea has been added to the Improve Gradebook settings options theme and if the Instructure Product Team determines it is a viable theme "based on other priorities, capacity, and delivery schedule", they will open it for voting in October or February where it will be open for 30 days. Hope this helps.

[jacksonl3]

I don't have the time to constantly search for threads on a topic, then vote on them.  If it has been requested for this long, and it can be done using excel and other LMSs, then what's the hold up?

Do not vote for me

LGJ

[hagedorn]

I was on the committee that recommended my school adopt Canvas.  But Canvas is now so far behind the times, that I recommend schools switch to a different system.   

This is a pretty easy software change to implement, and yet it's been over a decade with nothing done.   As others have said, it makes the life of an instructor difficult and wastes our time.   

[ChristineWang]

Sorry, this is just going to be a rant.

Ahh. I see now that I am not the only person to have searched for this function, or to have come back to search again after a couple years. An age-old problem, a basic one, that comes with not even a warning when you first set up the assignments or assignment groups, only to come back to bite at the end of a semester and make you do twice the amount of work. My school is changing our student management platform next year and I hope that includes an LMS change too. 🙃

Canvas LMS

Pros:

- Very stable, no glitches.

- You can recover deleted stuff.

Cons:

- So clunky and hard to use. Oh-so-very clunky.

E.g. it takes way too many clicks to paste in ONE image.

E.g. It takes 100x that effort, knowledge, patience and luck to resize a table.

E.g. It probably takes 90% of students and parents three times the total amount of time they will ever spend at the school to actually learn where to find anything other than the kid's assessment marks.

And now this, still here, after 9 years since that first post. NINE YEARS. I really wonder how many students have received the wrong grade and not known? Because the teachers who marked them also didn't know???   😕 well, sorry for the rant. Now to talk to my colleagues about 'fixing' our grades.