Zero worth assignments

[jmunoz1]

Hello Canvas Community!

I have this situation:

• Students have to turn in a draft of an essay. We don't want it to be worth any points, absolutely nothing.
• We decided to create an assignment, so they have the option to upload the archive. We gave the assignment a zero point value since we don't want to give any points for this.
• Under display grade, we had to choose Points, because if we choose Not Graded, the turn in options aren't available.

Question:

By putting 0, does this affect negatively the overall grading of the course? Some professors have told us it does.

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

 @jmunoz1 ​, I don't believe that creating a 0 point graded assignment has any impact on the overall course grade--as long as graders don't assign it any points, of course. However, I don't use a points-based gradebook, so I'll defer on that matter to someone else who does. However, I do use weighted assignment groups to calculate students' course grades, and I can tell you from experience that if you put this assignment in its on assignment group worth 0% of the grade, it will not have any impact on the overall course grade, even if you do assign it a grade.

[jmunoz1]

Thanks Stephanie! That has been my experience as well

[kona]

Deactivated user, I work with a lot of points based gradebooks and can 100% say that a zero point assignment does not impact student course grades. Yet, if a grade did get entered it would count towards extra credit. Something we do for assignments like this (zero point value) is make them complete/incomplete for the "display grade as." Faculty seem to prefer this over the zero in their gradebook because they can check off that the assignment is "complete" (it shows up as a checkbox), but still leaves the grade as a zero.

[jmunoz1]

Thank you Kona! We will look into this suggestion.

 @xcotto ​