Creating an Extra Credit Quiz

[kona]

It's not perfect, but here's the easiest thing I've found to create an autograded "extra credit" quiz. **Note: There was a much more elegant solution, but it no longer works and this is the easiest work around that I've found.**

1. Create a regular graded quiz and apply the settings as desired - Quiz Settings to Maximize Security. Make sure to add a note in the directions that the quiz will grade like a normal quiz, but after the due date it will be adjusted so it becomes extra credit.
2. After the due date for the extra credit quiz create an extra credit assignment worth zero points and labeled it as the Extra Credit points. Make sure in the directions to add a link to the actual extra credit quiz and explain that these are the points earned from the quiz.
3. In the gradebook enter in the number of points people got on the extra credit quiz into the extra credit assignment. If you have a lot of students you could also download your gradebook, copy and paste the extra credit quiz points into the extra credit assignment points, and then re-upload the grades.
4. Go back to the extra credit quiz and change it to an ungraded survey; this takes it out of the gradebook.

My current hope is that a real fix for this is coming from Canvas Studio: Modern Quizzing Engine​

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IMPORTANT NOTE: When copying your course (or just this extra credit quiz) the quiz will copy over as an ungraded survey so be sure to Edit it and revert it back to a graded quiz for the next time you want to use it!

Looking for additional information about adding extra credit?

• For general information on adding extra credit see the following guide - How do I give extra credit in a course?
• For more specific information on adding extra credit when using weighted assignment groups see the following document by stefaniesanders - Extra credit using weighted assignment groups.

[jreesor]

Due to the latest Gradebook update, this still works but requires 2 more steps be added after the above steps.

1. in Speedgrader update the grades using the 'Update grade' button on each submission.

•      This will lower the students grade temporarily.

2. Using Gradebook History you can now revert the grades back to the proper grade.

[kontrse]

Could I use the same theory as above to make the test worth more than 100%?  I have a 60 question midterm but only want 55 of the questions to count, thereby giving the students 5 "free" questions. (Don't care which questions they are.)  Could I convert the quiz to a graded survey worth 5.5 points instead of the 6 points created by the quiz? 

[kona]

 @kontrse ​, Canvas quizzes don't allow much flexibility in terms of the point value. The point value for a quiz is determined by the point value you assign each question. Because of this trying to do what you'd like to do isn't really possible. The only thing I can think of is a slightly related discussion/request that might help give you some ideas of what you could do - Allowing students to X amount of questions but still getting max score

[kontrse]

Thanks for the reply. After thinking about the best way to do this for what I need, I think after all the students take the test, I am going to change the midterm to a practice quiz and create a non-submission assignment for the gradebook with the point total I want and then just manually copy the exam grades into that assignment.  The practice quizzes don't figure into the grades, do they? 

[kona]

I replied with more information on your other post, but you are correct that practice quizzes don't factor into student's grades.

[mparsons]

Can't you just change the points the quiz is worth to 0 in the gradebook after the students take the quiz? So then students get 4 out of 0 for example if the quiz has four points.

[kona]

 @mparsons ​, if you look at the quiz settings you'll see that there's no one place to enter in a zero to make a quiz worth zero points (like there is for a discussion and an assignment). To make a graded quiz worth zero points after the fact you'd need to go into each individual question and make that question worth zero points. So yes, technically it would work, but it would involve changing the point value of every question on your quiz (and then remembering to change it back for the next semester).

[mparsons]

The difference may be was that the assignment itself was not a quiz, although I put it into the quiz category. It was manually graded by a rubric. When I changed the value of the assignment in the gradebook, that reflected back to the assignment total points, but did not change the points given to each student. 

[kona]

Yes, that is a very different scenario. What I'm talking about in this post (and my response above) are literal quizzes taken in Canvas, not other types of assignments or things done outside of Canvas that Instructors might label or call quizzes.

[Renee_Carney]

Thank you for the update on this document,  @kona 

[admin_nolan]

Here's what we're trying now to make a quiz extra credit.  Works well when a quiz does not have lots of questions.  Not so great if you have 50 or 100 questions.

Administer quiz in Canvas.

After all students have attempted the quiz, export a .csv copy of the gradebook.

Go back and edit the quiz, setting the point value for each question to 0.

Save the quiz.  It's column is now worth 0 points in the gradebook.

In the gradebook, this changes the quiz score for each student to the infamous "Q" - requires grading.

Mute the quiz column in the gradebook.

Use the drop down menu at the top of the columns and select "Set Default Grade".

Enter a value of 0.

Check the box "Overwrite already entered grades"

Click "Set Default Grade".

"Q's are gone.  All students now have a grade of 0 for the quiz.

Go to the exported .csv file.

I prefer to cleanup the file to avoid possible mistakes.  So, I delete all grade columns in the .csv file except for the column with the quiz scores.

Save updated .csv file.

Import .csv file into the gradebook.  Default 0 scores are replaced by the original quiz scores.

Unmute the coumn.

If you later import the content of this course into another Canvas course, you'll have to remember to set the points to the original values on the quiz questions in the new course.

Curious to know if anyone has also tried this approach.

Kevin

[hfchen]

Hi,

I think a combination of  @kona ​ and admin_nolan​ 's method still works and we can salvage this method (or do we have a better way of doing extra credit quiz now? If so please let me know)

So the only issue with Kona's original method is the Q. And while for shorter quizzes Kevin's method of editing all questions to be worth 0 point each is doable for longer quizzes it's not. And if anything Canvas' regrading engine still acts wonkey sometimes so I still think Kona's method of turning them into graded survey is easier.

Now for the tricky part of getting rid of the Q. Kevin's method is basically spot on with 1 exception. To get rid of the Q, it requires the "set default grade" step to make student have a different score than they currently do in my experience. So if you set default grade to 0 for everyone, those students who actually got 0 in the quiz will still have a Q lingering there from my experiment. So I generally set the default grade as something unachievable from this quiz, if it's a 5 point quiz I set the default grade as 20 for example. After doing that and clearing the Q, you can then reimport the previously exported gradebook and everything should be working correctly.

So to sum it up

1. Make graded quiz

2. Change it into a graded survey worth 0 points after everyone's done.

3. Mute assignment

4. Export Gradebook

5. Set Default grade on that assignment to a score that nobody currently has

6. Import previously exported Gradebook

This has been working for me for the past few weeks. If you are experiencing problems with this method or have a better method of handling extra credit quiz I would appreciate to know that.

Thanks everyone.

[hfchen]

Hi admin_nolan‌

Have you found a better solution for having an extra credit quiz that retain student response that can be easily accessed through speedgrader (changing the quiz to ungraded survey get rid of that option and importing the score as an /0 assignment does not keep responses) than what we have outlined in the last 2 post here?

Also have you had any luck with the son of the infamous Q, the lightning icon?

[adkim]

Please don't take offense, but I actually think this is cumbersome...  I think the easiest thing to do is:

• Create an assignment group called "Ungraded" that is worth 0% to the overall grade.  
• Create an "Extra Credit" assignment worth 0 points to the graded portion of the grade book.
• Create any kind of assignment/quiz you want for extra-credit and categorize the assignment as "Ungraded".  Assign this extra-credit assignment to any of your students eligible for the extra-credit.  
• At the end of the semester/term just add up the extra-credit points and put them in the "Extra-Credit" column in the grade book.  

This way, you don't have to change the type of assignment the student is doing, which I fear could change data and prevent you from doing any kind of item-analysis of the work.  It also lets you still easily access the assignments in SpeedGrader.

Just my 0.000002 cents...

Andy

[hfchen]

No offense taken. This is what I've been doing in a lot of cases. There are however lots of instructors who has many different assignment groups in Canvas for organization purposes without actually assigning assignment group weight to them (or they don't even know what the weight is until the end of the semester) where forcing them to assign different assignment group percentages is not possible/very cumbersome/goes against their way of teaching.

But yes, it looks like we have about explored what is possible with extra credit quizzes in this thread. I know Quiz 2.0 is coming but man it would help a lot of you can just check a box in a quiz to make it extra credit and I assume this would hardly be a unique use case scenario. Instructors shouldn't have to do work arounds with assignment groups to do this.

Thanks Andy.

[hydeag]

I'm new to Canvas and don't know the back end very well.  But how about this; will it work?

Create the quiz with each question worth .1 point ( 1/10th)  Ten questions would only be 1 point.

At the end of the quiz look at the total score of the student and override the final score.  (10 points rather than 1 for all correct answers)

I did a test quiz and it seemed to work, but perhaps someone has tried it and found it doesn't because of how Canvas works. In multiples of 10 it would be easy to do the override grade because of the multiplier.  (20 questions - score 1.6 = 16 points)

Curious to know if anyone has tried this for real, not just a test student.

[kona]

I'm not sure I follow you. If there are 20 questions (worth a total of 2 points - .1 per question) and the student got 16 correct and scored a 1.6 then how does overriding the final grade to a 16 give them the appropriate extra credit? 

[James]

Points are relative and this doesn't do what I think you want it to do.

UPDATE (Jun 7) -- thank you to hfchen for pointing out that this is getting fixed with the June 24, 2017, update.

A totally aside issue, but using 0.1 may causing cosmetic problems and potential rounding issues. Daniel Barnett brought up an issue where he had a 48 question quiz worth 0.15 points each. That should be 7.2 points. Canvas doesn't use a decimal library, so it converts numbers to binary and 0.15 can't be represented exactly using binary, and it caused display/rounding issues. I reported it as a bug to Canvas, they're not going to fix it. Here's how it looks when students go to take the quiz. 

Using point values of 0.5 or 0.25 do not cause problems because they can be represented exactly in binary form.

Okay, back to your recommendation.

If I understand, you want to make a 10 question quiz worth 0.1 points each so the total point value is 1 point. Then, after the fact, you go in and change the 0.6 to 6.

Here are some of the things I see.

• This is a lot of work as there is no way to automate this process. Okay, technically there is -- a person could copy and modify the code to QuizWiz: Enhancements to SpeedGrader and Quizzes‌ to do this, but then you would need to step through each student in SpeedGrader. Still faster than manually fudging each person, but going to require some programming skill up front. You could also modify the scores using the API and bypass SpeedGrader all together. That's what I would probably do if I was doing this, but I'm doing this because it's flawed in other ways.
• If the quiz is worth 1 point you change a 0.6 to 6, you're only giving them 5 points of extra credit because the assignment itself is still worth 1 point.
• If you want them to have 6 points of extra credit and the assignment itself is worth 1 point, you would need to add 6 points beyond the assignment value, so the 1 point quiz would need to be changed to 7 points.
• If they don't take the extra credit quiz, you've just cost them 1 point, so it's really not extra credit, but a small part of their grade
• 1 point is relative -- it may not actually a small part of their grade. That would depend on the class and how many points things are worth. Some instructors may grade assignments using a 4 3 2 1 0 point scale because points are relative. I've use low point values so things don't seem scary to the students, but if all of your grades are based with 10 points being the max instead of 100 points being the max, the relationship is still the same, but now 1 point is 10% instead of 1%.

I don't do extra credit quizzes. Maybe because it's so hard to do extra credit, but because I don't really like them and they don't fit in with my courses. Instead, I offer the ability to "Awesome" work on some assignments and make that worth 105% of the point value. This works much better with Canvas, although students sometimes wonder why their grade went down when they got 100% (it was because they had more than 100% before).

Here's how I would do things if I was doing extra credit quizzes and I was me -- the person who has some programming skills but absolutely hates repetitive tasks.

• I would make the quiz worth whatever you wanted the quiz to be worth but make not count towards the final. Then I would create a companion assignment worth 0 points and use some code to read all the grades on the quiz through the API and transfer them over to the companion assignment.
• The problem is that you can't check the box to not have it count towards the final for a quiz, so you would have to create an assignment group to hold the quiz and make it worth 0 percent of the grade. That complicates things for people who weren't using a weighted gradebook, but there are often work-arounds like putting everything else into a single assignment group worth 100% or making the weights of the assignment groups equal to the points you have. Still not a perfect solution and some people will probably have cases that can't be worked around (like they don't know how many points there are going to be when the semester begins).

For those without technical skills to write that code, you could export the gradebook, change the headings to match the right assignment, and then import it back in. Actually, now that I think about it, I might end up doing instead of writing the code because I'm good with spreadsheets and it wouldn't take me very long (less than a minute per quiz). You're going to be hard pressed to find someone who has the programming skills needed to do what needs done who doesn't have the skills to use a spreadsheet. On the other hand, lots of people can use a spreadsheet that can't program.

Regardless, Canvas often forces us to re-examine some of the things that we've always done. That's actually a good thing. Maybe extra credit shouldn't be so easy to hand out? What's the point of it? Students do poorly on assignments so we offer extra credit to bring their grade up. Whatever happened to the good-old-days when students just did well in the first place without the need for extra credit? And I assume that if you're using grade passback to your SIS, you might need your final grade to match the grade you want the student to have. So, I see the need, just bemoaning the fact that everyone seems to focus on grades rather than learning. And that's not the point of this document, it's just that my wife wants me to go to the farmer's market and the more I type here, the longer I can put that off.

EDIT:

After a shower as another delay tactic, I decided that if I was me, I would make it a practice quiz so that it didn't show up in the gradebook at all, then I would fetch the scores from there and transfer them over to the companion assignment. This would, however, preclude people from using the gradebook transfer to spreadsheet trick. If you want to go that way, then do what  @kona  suggested and make it a regular quiz, let the gradebook be off for a while, and then flip it to a practice quiz after the fact. With my programming approach, it just wouldn't appear at all in the gradebook until the teacher ran the [not yet written] program to transfer the grade.

[kona]

Hmm... after reading so much about EXTRA credit I'm thinking the Farmers Market should be a new EXTRA every weekend Family tradition...

[hfchen]

I think I have recently received a message that they've fixed the problem concerning weird fractional scores with regrading and is pushing that to beta. I just tested your scenario and it does seem to be fixed and it should be pushed to production on the 24th. See video below.

2017-06-07_1746 

[hydeag]

Great explanation of how Canvas works for this type of action.  I now understand why my idea is probably not feasible.  However, it seems that this topic (extra credit) has generated a lot of "buzz" and hopefully Canvas has taken note.  Until I know Canvas much better, and have learned how to use all of it's features, I will probably take your clue and not offer extra credit at all.  There are other ways to compensate stellar work.  Thank you all for your comments.

[shero]

I've guided faculty who use weighted grade groups to create an additional weighted grade group for the percent above 100 that they wish the extra credit quiz can add to student grades (typically in the 2 to 5% range).  I then have them assign the quiz to this weighted grade group and it doesn't matter how many points the quiz is worth, since it will only count towards the 2 to 5% of their grade.  This also works if they use total points based grading by creating a grade group that is worth 100% for all other assignments and then the additional weighted group just for the extra credit assignment. Of course this option only works if the entire quiz is an extra credit assignment. so many of the faculty split up their quizzes to allow for this and auto-grading.  I too hope for increased flexibility with the next version of quizzes!

[kona]

 @shero , The only issue with this is that the grade won't calculate correctly until all grades are entered into the gradebook - so the end of the semester. I'd recommend checking out the following post - Extra credit using weighted assignment groups - for more information.

[shero]

Hi Kona - thank you for providing the additional information which includes the caveat on weighted extra credit.  We've asked Canvas support on numerous occasions. In addition, we  hired a trainer to come to our campus during our implementation last summer, where we also inquired about extra credit in Canvas.  At no point was the caveat on the weighted option ever mentioned.  It has not, however, been an issue for us thus far, since our faculty are pretty clear about how they are grading with extra credit in the courses. Thank you again for pointing it out!

[kona]

It only got brought to our attention by our Health Professions students; who monitor every grade and how it impacts their overall grade like hawks. We then tested this ourselves and found that it didn't work quite the way faculty (and at the time us) thought it would, i.e., it matched what Stefanie had on her blog. After that we decided to error on the side of caution (and no opportunity for grade appeals).

[jmanilay]

Hello, I followed the original advice at the top of this page, which worked for the gradebook.  However, my quiz was a combination of multiple choice and text responses that were viewable on SpeedGrader.  When I changed the quiz to an ungraded survey, the text responses are no longer viewable, so I can't see what the students entered!  Any advice on how to retrieve that without screwing up the entire gradebook?

[shero]

Jennifer - I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think I've seen this with a professor on our campus. I had the professor go to the "Moderate This Quiz" link on the quiz itself. It listed each student and when we clicked on the student's name - we had access to their responses. Hoping this might help you!

Marie

[kona]

You can also go to quiz statistics and then download the question information and it will show each student and how they answered for every question all on one spreadsheet.