Disable "What If" Feature

(5)

As helpful as the "what if" feature can be, many students become obsessed with their grade as they create hypothetical situations that lead to "grade grubbing".  We all know too well the "I needed a 92 on the project to have an A and I was only one point away so is there anything I can do?" situation with a student.  

I propose that teachers have the capability of disabling this feature.

#mhs

Comments from Instructure

Thank you for your thoughts and participation around this request. It is never fun to hear about cheating or ways in which individuals abuse trust. We feel that the intended use of this feature is extremely valuable and continue to hear so from students. At this time we are not planning on removing or disabling “what if” functionality within Canvas.

This has been a good conversation, and the conversation can continue, but we will now close this idea for voting. It will remain in the Canvas Studio space, so there will not be a need for resubmission or re-vote of this idea. It has been considered and we have given an official response, even if it is not the one you were hoping for. Thank You.

117 Comments
laurakgibbs
Community Champion

 @steven_j_livese ‌! I could not believe when I saw your name here... hello! And CONGRATULATIONS to you on emeritizing! I will try not to be too insanely jealous. I want to write Star-Trek fan fiction when I retire, but I imagine you have much more admirable scholarly projects you will finally have time for.

I share your feelings about the grade-grubbing; I have taken a totally different approach to solving the problem, shifting the focus of student effort to the earlier weeks of the semester and encouraging them (STRONGLY encouraging them) to finish before Dead Week and, ideally, a week or two ahead of that. Online courses are not required to have a final exam, glory hallelujah! My real efforts come at the beginning of the semester, where I shamelessly try to take advantage of time they have early on before things really get going in their other classes. The more work they can accomplish in my classes before the first round of midterms begins in their other classes, the better. For my type of class (writing-focused, highly iterative, lots of revising), this approach works great. I get no questions from students about upping their grade at the end of the semester because they have had months to get used to the idea that they are in charge of their class progress, as much or as little as it might be. They know that, as the saying goes: "you can't use the runway behind you" (Andy used to be a pilot, so I've adopted that saying from him). I've written up my thoughts about all this at Grading.MythFolklore.net.

Jesse Stommel (you may know him; I can't remember if he's come to OU to give a talk or not) wrote up a piece about grading where he actually included a picture of a grub. That picture is not for the faint of heart, ha ha. But of course people do use the phrase grade grubbing, and, sad to say, it is a natural outcome of the system we have built.

http://www.jessestommel.com/why-i-dont-grade/ 

jesse stommel essay screenshot

Congratulations again on your well-deserved emeritus title... and tell Nina hi from me too of course!!!

rae_gerold-smit
Community Novice

I agree with Kelley. I am a student. There are times when the "What-If" feature has been helpful in maintaining a healthy balance between school, work, and family. While I understand the concerns voiced by Elizabeth Seastrunk and Lindy Foster, they are conflating "grade-grubbing" with ethics. To use the "What-If" feature as they have described is unethical behavior that will and should carry its own consequences, either indirectly with parents who DO eventually find out the truth and/or immediately with educators who know what the real grades are.

An effective solution to 'grade-grubbing" can be as simple as a paragraph in the syllabus, as several of my instructors have done. However worded, it says "No grade-grubbing, no extra credit, buckle down, do the work." When the expectations are clearly stated from day 1, grade-grubbing becomes ineffective. Now, what you could do is add a function to the "What-If" that identifies that grade as hypothetical, not actual.

barbarao
Community Novice

Though this may bug instructors, this is a best practice for students to learn how to manage their grades, time, etc. We may not like that students are figuring out how to earn just the minimum, but that is their choice. And let's be honest, once they have their job, degree and an overall gpa, in the big picture, a passing grade of d or A in specific courses doesn't really matter.

khall66
Community Novice

I also want my students engaged in knowing where they stand.  Four years ago I asked my class to compute a grade from a hypothetical grading system.  Only 20 % of the class could do it.  Many students thought they were passing when they were actually failing.  I finally figured out that they were computing their grade based on their scores divided by the number of points they had attempted, not the number of points possible.  Canvas percentages and scores do the same thing.  I had to take an hour, and do this every semester to teach my students how to figure out their grade at any point during the semester.  How can we expect them to pass when they don't even know they are failing?

matthew_weather
Community Novice

I agree.

Also, the "What If" feature allows everyone to calculate their grade, disabling it doesn't prevent students from calculating What-If scores on their own, but merely limits that ability to the math-savvy students.

In other words: disabling "What If" unfairly puts mathematically challenged students at a disadvantage, while their mathematically inclined classmates can still do the calculation on their own, if they're sufficiently motivated to do so.

sychiang
Community Novice

 @lindsay_henry ‌ As a public university student in the UC system, I feel like this takes away from the students' autonomy and contributes to the already uneven power dynamic that comes at a research university; many professors do not care about teaching and begrudgingly complete it to continue their research, especially in STEM fields. While this tool may be "annoying" to professors, it is extremely useful to students and can reduce a lot of anxiety surrounding calculations. There are many websites that already do the task of the "what-if" function. Keeping it in Canvas simply consolidates features and ensures that there are no errors in our calculations. Why do teachers get to control everything in a course, when their best interest may not necessarily align with student learning outcomes? A minor inconvenience to teachers makes a huge difference to us and I wish that more empathy could be employed in this decision.

Deactivated user‌ I urge you all to consider the fact that this thread (like many others) is an echo chamber of many professors. There is only one other student in this entire thread. By its nature, most students do not engage in this website; I only know of it due to the fact that I was on the LMS transition team as a student representative when we switch from Smartsite to Canvas on my campus. This isn't just an issue within this thread, but a trend amongst others as well. I hope that something can be done to address this inequity in the future, as well as with this specific case.

laurakgibbs
Community Champion

 @sc48928 ‌ Thanks for adding your voice to the discussion. The more student voices, the better!

I teach at the Univ. of Oklahoma, and one of my goals as a teacher is to stop grading completely, switching to feedback instead that is about helping students improve (I teach writing). I don't know if you've heard of this ungrading movement — it's much stronger in K-12 than in higher ed, unfortunately — but it's worth knowing about; you can learn more by following the hashtag #TTOG at Twitter (Teachers Throwing out Grades). I know my students appreciate the ungrading approach, and one of my complaints about the Canvas Gradebook is that it only supports numeric/percentage-out-of grading. I've written a lot about this here at my Canvas blog, and I shared my students' thoughts yesterday in fact:

What Students Say: F17 Course Evals 

Here's an article about the absurdity of grading, averages, and percentages:

It’s Time to Stop Averaging Grades

And a great essay by Jesse Stommel (a leader for this movement in higher ed):

Why I Don't Grade

Thanks again for taking the time to comment here; especially at research-driven universities (like the UCs), we need students to hold us accountable for teaching and helping us to find ways to do better!

P.S. I graduated from UC Berkeley in 1986, so I have to say: Go Bears. 🙂

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

 @sychiang , thank you for participating; we love hearing from students in the Community and everywhere else. Before my school adopted Canvas, when I was teaching in a previous LMS that did not have a grade calculation feature for students, I regularly received questions from my students about their grades: "How can I improve my grade?" "How close am I to a B?" "What do I have to do to get an A?" "If I don't complete the rest of the assignments, what will my final grade be?" and so on. It took time, but I remember how it felt to be a student, and I answered every one of their questions—yet I thought, There has to be a better way. So I devised a relatively easy-to-use Excel form that I provided to my students; they would fill in their current grades, along with hypothetical grades for uncompleted assignments, and could now answer most of their questions on their own. This solution proved so popular among students that I was asked to present on it at our school's annual Faculty Institute back in 2009 (or 2010, I don't exactly remember—at any rate, a long time ago).

But it was still a clumsy solution, as it required a certain amount of spreadsheet expertise on the part of the instructor (it was an easy-to-use form for students, but not so easy to design; the spreadsheet designer has to have a firm grasp of how grading schemes work and how to translate them into Excel formulas). Also, only students who had Excel installed could use it.

So our school was thrilled when we learned that Canvas had a built-in "what-if" feature.

Why am I telling this story? Well, two reasons: One, because I hope you will continue to participate here, and that you will encourage your classmates to do so, as we truly want and need more students to share their perspectives; and two, despite the fact that most of the participants in the Community are Canvas admins, instructors, and designers, we strive mightily to channel our students' voices through our contributions. The Canvas LMS is predicated on student-centered learning, and we take that mission very seriously.

sbailey
Community Participant

I don't know why anyone would vote down on this.  The proposal does not say to get rid of the "what if" analysis, but just to give the option for those that do not want it - to disable it.

rae_gerold-smit
Community Novice

Because it gives instructors the option of disabling it without consideration for student need. That’s why.

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sbailey
Community Participant

Matthew:

This may be true for your course - so you could leave it on.  However, if they are unable to calculate their own "what if" score in my course, they have much bigger problems.

The problems I must deal with could easily be solved by giving the professor the OPTION to turn it off.

sbailey
Community Participant

If the default setting is on, then the professor may consider the need of the student balanced by the confusion and problems that may be caused in his/her course when deciding to turn it off or leave it on.

amber_batten
Community Explorer

It's a pretty new feature.  What did students do before it?  I believe it needs to be an option because there are different types of students and educational settings in which Canvas is used.  In our setting, it is more of a nuisance than it is a help.  It is causing many problems.  In our case, an option would be extremely beneficial.  I can certainly see the point in not turning it off for those in other situations based on very well written and explained comments, but in ours, having an option would solve many issues that we are facing.  Remembering that we don't all work or teach in the same environment is important when replying to comments made by others.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

 @amber_batten , the "what-if" feature is at least six years old; it's been in place as long as I have been using Canvas (since February 2011). What did our students do before we adopted Canvas? They asked their professors/instructors/teachers to do the calculations for them.

amber_batten
Community Explorer

stefaniesanders‌ - my mistake.  It has just been brought to our attention within the last year and we have only been using Canvas for less than two years.  Since this is just an option to allow teachers who wish to disable it to do so, then keeping it enabled for those who find it advantageous shouldn't be a problem.  All this vote is asking for is an option to allow it or not.  As I mentioned, in our case, it is not turning out to be helpful but rather the opposite - or at least quite a few "bad apples" are causing it to seem more of a problem for our teachers.

megan_williams
Community Explorer

I'm all in favor of instructor choice.  My least favorite part about the "What-if" grades is that students forget to turn them off, and then email because the grade I say they have is different from the one they believe they have.  It would be very helpful if the background changed color, or the grades were stamped with a "watermark" indicating that these are "what-if" grades.

fosterl
Community Contributor

Megan, this is such a good idea (watermarking what-if grades), it might be worth a new feature idea!

chriscas
Community Coach
Community Coach

I'm voting this down for a few reasons...

For those who want this feature to prevent students from presenting altered grades to their parents/advisors/coaches/etc... It's already been mentioned here that the F12  function built into basically every modern browser would allow this behavior to happen anyways in an even more official looking way (even if the what-if page had altered colors or watermarks, the F12 option allows students to change the official grades page).  If 7th graders have already caught on to the F12 trick, it's probably pretty widely known.  Disabling the what-if would really have a minimal impact here.

For those complaining about grade-griping... I understand that frustration, but I don't think disabling this feature would really change much there.  The students who grade-gripe the most are likely going to be able to figure out how to do the calculations on their own anyways, so disabling what-if isn't likely to have a big impact on this either in my estimation.

For those in favor of faculty control of options...  While I can agree with that viewpoint in a lot of areas, this particular one doesn't fall into that category for me.  As a Canvas administrator, I think at least some level of consistency and features form course to course is a good idea.  Having an overabundance of options generally makes things more confusing for students and makes it harder for everyone to provide technical support.  If grading is going to be done in Canvas, I'm in favor of having the what-if available.  Grading outside of Canvas is always possible (though in this day and age, I think most students have an expectation to see grades in the LMS).

For those who don't want students to be able to calculate their their final grade so easily and set priorities...  I actually think letting students be able to do this is beneficial as a life-lesson to some extent.  Everyone has priorities in life and has to figure out how to balance them out.  I understand that academics should be a very high priority for students, but if they are taking a large number of courses or have other things going on in their lives (jobs, kids, family issues, etc) and are satisfied with getting the minimum grade for a class, is that really a problem?  If the minimum grade isn't really acceptable, shouldn't that be the thing that's adjusted, rather than trying to prevent students from figuring out how they choose to attain that grade?  Letting students see how to balance their effort among different classes and life activities to get the outcomes they desire seems to be a good thing to me.

-Chris

chplum20
Community Novice

I have a idea. I like the fact that I can (yes you read that right. I am a student in backer charters) See what my grade might be if I got this much on this then my score can be this. But like you said they use the "what-if" and then show it as there real grade. Why don't you have it so that if "what-if" score is put in then the total score turns blue.

leslie_dow
Community Novice

I've read through the comments in this thread. I have also had several students engage in pretty sophisticated analyses using What If for grade grubbing. Had they focused that intently on learning, it's likely they would not have needed the grubbing.

I think What If is a tempting distraction for a certain type of student. These folks existed before Canvas and What If, but now it's easier for them to obsess on squeezing every point out. I have a standing policy where I offer one chance for extra credit at the end of the semester. It's a single challenging exercise and is worth enough points to bring someone who is within 1 point of the next letter grade up if they get all the points. I won't say it's completely stopped grade grubbing, but it has helped. I also clearly state I will not tolerate grade grubbing. I offer the extra credit, and that's it.  Grade grubbing via the What If feature adds a layer of stress to the end of the semester anxiety, I would like to turn it off.

~Leslie