Individual assignment weights in weighted groups

[Luara]

I've seen conflicting information about whether it's possible to weight individual assignments within weighted groups. For example, if I have 3 assignments within a group weighted at 20% of the total grade, and I want assignment 1 to be worth 25% of the group, assignment 2 to be 25% of the group, and assignment 3 to be 50% of the group, is it possible to do this using points? So, assignment 1 = 25 points, assignment 2= 25 points, assignment 3=50 points, and those will be weighted differently within the group? Or, does canvas just automatically distribute the weight evenly regardless of points, meaning that each assignment would be worth 33.3% of the group grade?

In short, do the points of individual assignments have any impact on how much they're worth in the group? There's conflicting information in the other community posts.

[chriscas]

Hi @Luara,

Inside of a weighted group, points still do matter.  Canvas essentially adds up the points earned, then divides by the points possible, then multiplies by the assignment group weight to determine the final grade for the course.  So, the points option you laid out (25, 25, 50) would do exactly what you want in this scenario!

Best of luck with your course.  Feel free to reach out to the community if you have any other questions.

-Chris

[Luara]

This is the exact opposite of what our campus helpdesk is telling me! They're saying points don't matter unless you set up the entire gradebook as points only (so no weighted groups). They're claiming that the 3 assignments would be weighted equally regardless of how many points they are. I'm completely new to this LMS and don't know what to believe!

[chriscas]

Hi Laura,

I can assure you the points inside of the groups still matter.  Your helpdesk may just be getting a bit confused on things, especially if Canvas is a new LMS for your school/institution.  The guide for weighing the final grade basically says the same thing I did, except with a little less detail: "Within each assignment group, a percentage is calculated by dividing the total points a student has earned by the total points possible for all assignments in that group."

-Chris

[Luara]

I've asked them multiple times, and they keep insisting that items will be weighted equally amongst all assignments regardless of points. I'm new faculty trying to teach myself canvas the week before school starts-- they've had it for a while. I've used 3 other LMSs, but this one is very confusing to me.

[SusanNiemeyer]

Your Canvas Help Desk is incorrect. So, I will, for example, set up a course with the following Assignment Groups:

• Weekly Assignments - 40%
• Weekly Quizzes - 10%
• Exam 1 - 15%
• Exam 2 - 15%
• Final Exam - 20%

Within each Assignment Group, I pay attention to the number of points for each item. For example, each of the twelve Weekly Quizzes has 10 points for total of 120 points. Let's say the student earns a total of 96 points. Then for the "Weekly Quizzes" Assignment Group, the total percentage would be 80%

The Final Exam has two separate parts. The students first take a Quiz and then submit an Assignment. The Quiz is worth 10 points, and the Assignment is worth 20 points for a total of 30 points. Let's say that the same student earns 8 points on the Quiz and 16 points on the Assignment for a total of 24 points. For the "Final Grade" Assignment Group, the student's total percentage would also be 80%.

In this scenario, I pay attention to the number of points within each Assignment Group. I want all of the Weekly Quizzes to have the same number of points. For the Final Exam, the written Assignment is more important than the multiple choice Quiz so I have doubled the number of points the students can earn for the Assignment.

Your Canvas Help Desk simply doesn't know how to do the math. 

[Luara]

This makes sense to me, but they've insisted 3 times (I've tried asking the question in different ways) that all items are equally weighted and there's no way to control the weight of an individual assignment unless you put it in its own group. I wish there were a way to test for myself before I was responsible for 3 classes of students! Maybe my school has a different version that's more limited? I'm new faculty trying to teach myself how this works the week before school starts. I've used 3 other LMSs, but Canvas seems to work differently than those, so my intuition isn't helping.

[Chris_Hofer]

@Luara ...

Your school should have a Canvas "test" environment where you can test out anything you want without disturbing anything in your school's normal "production" environment (this is the environment that you normally sign into on a daily basis).  Anything you do in "test" won't affect "production".

• What is the Canvas test environment?
• What is the Canvas release schedule for beta, production, and test environments?
• How do I access the Canvas test environment as an instructor?
• How do I log out of Canvas as an instructor?

Just be sure that you log out of "test" before logging back into your "production" environment...so as to not get confused about which environment you are working in.

Hope this might help in some way.

[Luara]

Thanks! I will look into this. Gradebook stuff seems like it would be hard to test since you can't really tell how it functions until there are student submissions. Unless maybe I can upload some documents myself and see how grade distribution works with some fake grades.

[Chris_Hofer]

@Luara ...

Maybe check with your school's Canvas administrator to see if he/she would be willing to do some testing in the "test" environment with you.  The admin could probably log in as a student in the "test" environment so that you could see what things look like on your end.

[TrishaMeyer1]

Hi @Luara ,

You should be able to use your Test Student to try out different point scenarios to test the process. I agree with everyone here - Canvas uses points within Assignment Groups. How you set your point values determines the relative weights of assignments within a group.

Your help desk team might be thinking of some systems (usually SISs but could be an LMS too) that allow for both weighted categories and a "multiplier" that can be applied to individual assignments, such as 1.0 or 2.0. I have never used such a system but have seen it as an option in SISs that I have used, and I've seen the concept discussed on this board in previous questions. Canvas does not have such a feature. You have to set the point value accordingly rather than using a "multiplier."

[chriscas]

Agree!  I did also think of one thing the help desk team may be getting confused or crossed up in language about...  When they say points don't matter in the groups, they are somewhat correct.  Whether you have 2 50 point assignments, or 2 1000000 point assignments would really work out the same.  The relative weights of the assignments in the groups DO matter though, and I think is the subtlety they may be missing.

-Chris

[Luara]

Maybe! I asked multiple ways, including the way I described it in the initial post, and even gave examples. They insist that three assignments worth different amounts of points will all end up being 33.3% of the group grade, regardless. I've separated all assignments in their own groups for now because I don't know the system well enough to know how to recalculate everything if it's all wrong. I've set up one group with two assignments as a test. We'll see what it looks like in December, I guess! I've used Moodle, Blackboard, and D2L successfully in the past, so usually I'm able to teach myself new systems quickly, but I think all the conflicting information is throwing me off.