Using Outcomes with New Quizzes

[farleyb]

We have begun trying to tie our learning outcomes to our assessments within Canvas to gain a better understanding of student mastery of the content.  I would love for students to be able to see their mastery through the Student Mastery grade book view, but I am not comfortable letting them see that until I am confident the mastery is showing what I want it to show.

I have the outcomes created in my course, and currently have the calculation method set to the default 65/35 decaying average, out of 5 points.  We have used this learning outcome on 2 separate assessments so far, and have gotten different results each time.  The first assessment was a small quiz featuring 8 questions, all aligned to this standard, so we aligned the whole quiz to this Learning outcome.  The second assessment covered multiple learning targets and only featured 4 questions tied to this outcome, so we aligned each question individually to the learning outcome.

We had students who scored a 5/8 (62%) on the first quiz, and were marked as mastery in the outcome report, but on the second assessment scored a 3/4 (75%) and were marked as no mastery in the outcome report.

When we set up our Learning Outcomes, the mastery level is calculated out of a set number of points.  For example we have 3 set as mastery out of 5 possible points.  I am wondering if Canvas calculates mastery on the set number of points set in the Outcome (meaning that to calculate correctly, every assessment would need to have that number of points available), or if Canvas is calculating mastery using the Decaying average WITHIN the assessment (meaning the final question counts for 65% of the mastery calculation and the other 35% is calculated from the other questions?

Ideally I would like to calculate mastery within an assessment by a straight average (students must show >70% on a quiz to show mastery ON THAT QUIZ) but use the Decaying average across the entire course (The latest assignment counts as 65% of the mastery calculation and the average of all previous assignments count as 35%).  Is there any way to make this happen?

TL;DR

• Do learning outcomes calculate mastery within a quiz based on a set number of points? or is a percentage?
• Is it possible to calculate mastery differently within a quiz than across assignments throughout a course?

[amandasoderlind]

Hi @farleyb . Did you ever get an answer or resolution to this? My institution is just now beginning to use new quizzes and I have the exact same questions. It is clear to me how mastery is calculated in assignments using rubrics, but seems very unclear when an outcome is attached to a quiz. I can't seem to pin down the logic despite testing this out multiple times. Any insights would be so appreciated!

[farleyb]

Hi @amandasoderlind 

Unfortunately, I have not received any insight to this topic.  I too have tried many different scenarios to better understand how the mastery is calculated in a quiz, but with no luck.  My district is moving to a standards-referenced grading system, so I would like to be able to utilize the tools available.  Hopefully we can get an answer soon, so we can incorporate this tool into our data-collecting and -analyzing practices.

[amandasoderlind]

Hello @farleyb. Thanks so much for the response. I'll continue to look into this and if I find any concrete answers, i'll let you know. It would be great to have an understanding of how this calculates to ensure proper reporting and analysis.