Quizzes / point totals - Any Ideas?

[TheMZA]

I built a weekly Quiz to prompt students to log internship hours for their for-credit internship course.

1. Each individual question asks them how many hours they worked (Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri). There are multiple possible answers (1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours...) with a corresponding point value for each (1,2,3...).

2. I've set the Quiz to "Display as Points". The max points for the Quiz is set to 12 (the average hours they should be interning per week).

3. In a perfect world, the students would answer the questions, and their point total would be something like 10, or 12, or 15. Then Canvas would display their points (10/12 or 12/12 or even 15/12).

The PROBLEM is that, when grading, Canvas uses the maximum point value for the answers (i.e. 60) and disregards the point value for the assignment (12). It then grades the students' quizzes as 10/60 or 12/60 or 15/60, converts it to a percent (17% or 20% or 25% in this example). Then it goes back and applies that percent to the total points for the Quiz (12). Needlessly complex.

So basically, a student who interns for 12 hours (out of 12) and enters 12 on the Quiz gets a score of 2.4 points instead of 12 points.

SOLUTION SOUGHT: I'm just looking to create a simple Quiz where students enter a number and that number is then reflected as their "grade" for the Quiz.

[greydon · Accepted solution]

Hello @TheMZA 

The main thing is - is this a classic quiz or new quiz? They definitely function differently when it comes to points values and the way certain questions calculate points. Did you set it up this way in classic? https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-create-a-Multiple-Answers-quiz-question... Or this way in new? https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-create-a-Multiple-Answer-question-in-Ne... 

If it's a new quiz, you can use the edit on the main page before you go to "build" to override points associated with the questions and say this quiz is worth 12 points. Then regardless of what the students answer, their points should say X/12 instead of X/60. I think this may be the easiest fix for you? But again, it depends on the quiz itself. 

If none of that appears to fix it, it would be best if you contact Canvas Support and they can take a look at the specifics of your course and assignment and provide better insight.

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Basics-Guide/How-do-I-contact-Canvas-Support/ta-p/389767 

[TheMZA]

I could never get around Canvas converting student scores (points) to a percent when auto-grading before converting it back to points. It's possible your solution may work, as I came up with my own workaround before reading this-- I do believe I tried everything though.

My workaround solution was to add a dummy quiz answer at the bottom that brought the total value of the Quiz to 100 points. That way, regardless of how many hours students log (12, 15, 25, etc), when Canvas converts it to a percent (12%, 15%, 25%, etc) and back again, the students still have the correct "points"/hours (12, 15, 25).

This is very useful to me, as I can scan down the columns and determine how many weekly hours every student has worked, as well as have a running total for the semester.

Not ideal, but functional!