Perfect score lowering total percentage

[SherriWall]

A student emailed me:

"I am emailing you to discuss my grade. At the beginning of the week, my grade was a 92.89 and when you added my discussion grade this week, which was a 20 out of 20, my grade dropped to a 92.82. I am uncertain as to why the grade would drop after receiving a 100 percent on an assignment. This has happened in my other class as well. My other professor had to go in and fix it. Please get back to me on how to proceed."

I went into the grade book and removed the 20 points, and her total went back to 92.89. I am baffled.

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @SherriWall,

Do you happen to be using assignment groups with weighing enabled?

My guess is that you are, and that for whatever group the discussion was in, the student currently has higher than a 100% average.  If that's the case, getting a 100% on this discussion would lower the average for that group, thus lowering the overall grade.

If that's not the case, I'd be totally stumped as the Canvas gradebook uses a pretty simple points earned divided by points possible calculation for the final grade when no weighing is enabled.

Look forward to hearing back from you!

-Chris

[SherriWall]

Hi Chris, Thank you for your quick reply. I do use assignment groups with weighing enabled, and because the student received extra credit, their discussion percentage is 101%. Your explanation makes sense. I can see how this would confuse/frustrate students. Any work arounds, other than not giving extra credit?

[chriscas]

Hi @SherriWall,

Thanks for the confirmation of the issue...

Extra credit can honestly be a giant topic of its own, and the options somewhat depend on what the students are doing for extra credit and how you want it to show.  With weighted assignment groups, I think the easiest to understand option for everyone is to have a separate extra credit group worth X% of the grade, where the total will be 100+X percent (so if you have a 1% extra credit group, your group weights total would be 101%.  This method works well mathematically, and should never cause the weird grade lowering your student just experienced.  With that being said, if you're just offering extra credit as "bonus" points on an existing assignment, this would be extra work for you to create the group and a no-submission assignment for you to input the extra credit grades into. What do you think of this idea?

-Chris