[Gradebook Settings] Make late policy affect only attempts submitted after the due date/time

[kowens]

Currently in the New Gradebook, instructors can set the gradebook so that late penalties are automatically deducted. It is unfortunate that in multiple-attempt quizzes for which only the highest-scored attempt is to count, penalties for late submissions can adversely affect scores from attempts that were on time.

For example, suppose a quiz has multiple attempts, and only the highest score is preserved in the gradebook. The instructor allows late attempts with an automatic deduction 25% per day. Prior to the deadline, a student earns a kept score of 75%. When the student attempts the quiz again a day late, he again earns a raw score of 75%. Instead of deducting 25% from the late submission, the gradebook deducts 25% from the kept score. Thus, even though student's highest attempt is the 75% earned before the deadline, his score is recorded as only 50%.

So, I am asking that late penalties apply individually to attempts. Once the attempt is adjusted automatically accordingly, then the gradebook should select or calculate the kept score based upon whatever rule has been set up (such as highest attempt).

[morrisj1]

Here's another example: A student has 5 attempts to take a quiz and Canvas is set to keep the highest score. The student earns a high score of 80% on the first four attempts before the due date, so 80% should be the lowest possible score she can earn on the quiz. She then goes back after the deadline to take the quiz as a review, scoring 100% but receiving a deduction of 50% for the last attempt being late. Instead of keeping the 80% score, Canvas erases the 80% score and replaces it with the 50% score (apparently because Canvas compares the raw scores and takes the highest one *before* applying any late penalties). This Canvas programming error is punishing exactly the responsible students in my classes who go back and try to learn from their mistakes. To be fair to my students, my only option is to spend hours combing through every late quiz submission in all of my classes and manually regrade all of the quizzes that Canvas has graded incorrectly.

I realize that this situation could be prevented by not having late penalties, but in this era of electronic instruction, it's very important for students to be motivated to stay on schedule; my classes simply can't work without this capability. When I contacted Canvas support (in September 2020) and gave them this exact example, they claimed that it wasn't a bug at all and saw no problem with an 80% being replaced by a 50%, even though the program says it will keep the highest score. They instead insisted that what I wanted was a "new feature". As many have aptly pointed out over a period of more than a year in this thread, this is a programming error and not a request for a new feature, as most reasonable people would agree that Canvas's way of applying late penalties in this circumstance makes no logical or pedagogical sense.  It is beyond frustrating that Canvas can't fix obvious programming errors like this on a reasonable time scale.

[jacob_white]

I'm using multiple attempts in New Quizzes using the "save highest score" option.  The problem arises when a student completes an assignment on time, and then re-attempts it after the due date.  I want my student's best possible score to appear in the gradebook.  If a student got 90% with an on-time submission, and then has a 2nd attempt well after the due date that is 100%, New Quizzes saves the 100%, sends it to the gradebook THEN applies the late penalty, which changes the 90% to to 50%.  There are a couple possible possible fixes for this:

1. Allow New Quizzes to consider the Gradebook late penalty when deciding which attempt to save (keeping the 90% rather than the 100% with 50% late penalty)

2.  Add an option in Gradebook late policy that says "Set late penalty based on date/time of 1st submission only"  (This would keep the 100% on the highest grade from New Quizzes, but not apply a late penalty since the first submission was on time.  Even if both submissions were late, the deduction would not increase with additional submissions)  This fix has the advantage of applying to situations that do not involve New Quizzes

[volzk]

To Whom It May Concern:

I thought that the engineers had fixed this over the summer.  I was pretty sure that we received an email that this was fixed... but I can't find it in my archived emails, and it is NOT fixed.  I am having the same problem this semester, and I was caught off-guard, as I was SURE that we learned that they finally debugged it.  Students are having the LATE penalty apply to ALL attempts, which is just ridiculous.  Does anyone recall hearing that the engineers had repaired this bug, or was it a different bug that was fixed?  

Thanks,

Katie

[volzk]

THIS HAS NOT BEEN FIXED.  

Please call Canvas Support and let them know that they haven't fixed THIS.  They did "fix" a few examples of this by their re-programming (based on the link that is above, where they say this matter is "closed" because they're addressing it as a bug), BUT THEY DID NOT FIX THE PROBLEM.  

They are still NOT applying the late penalty to individual attempts. 

For example, if I choose "highest" attempt as the score to keep, and my student scores 8/10 on the original attempt, and then 10/10 on the late attempt, the LATE PENALTY is being applied to the 10/10 because it's the highest, and THAT SCORE is going into my gradebook.  In case you're wondering, THAT SCORE is 75%.  UGH!!!!!  

Canvas Support (Level 2) is telling me that this IS the way it is meant to be programmed.  The crazy thing is... WE MISSED IT!  Even when I read the link above, I thought it WAS addressing our problem.  But we missed this scenario when we looked it over.

Please please help in calling them or writing to let them know that this BUG is NOT YET FIXED.

Thanks.

Katie

[morrisj1]

This issue is wreaking havoc in our department for those of us who depend on the late penalty to motivate students to stay on schedule in these challenging instructional times. We're having to send warnings to our students like: "Whatever you do, don't go back and reattempt a quiz after the deadline to learn from your mistakes, because Canvas might erase your highest score even though it says that it will keep it." Students are obviously confused by peculiar messages like this, but I don't see what choice we have. We can either warn our students that Canvas won't do what it says it will or manually inspect hundreds of quiz attempts and regrade every quiz that Canvas has graded incorrectly.

Several of us have contacted Canvas support to point out this programming bug and have gotten strange and confusing responses; everything from reacting as though this is a brand new problem (even though they've known about the problem for years and have previously admitted that it's a bug), to saying that they don't see any problem with Canvas telling students that their highest score will be kept even though that's not always the case. We'll keep trying, but based on the dizzying array of contradictory responses from Canvas support, I have my doubts as to whether they even understand the problem or how serious it is, let alone that they're in the process of fixing it.

[elisat]

I have an instructor who has students take a quiz multiple times to master the content before moving on. They can go back and re-take the quiz to study. He is using a late penalty so that they will keep up with the due dates, but they often go back and re-take the quiz after the due date to prepare for the exam. He doesn't want to penalize them for re-taking the quiz, but he still wants to penalize those who don't submit prior to the original due date. He has too many students to manually adjust the grade status from "Late" to "None."

[morrisj1]

A colleague of mine e-mailed Canvas support a few days ago to report that Canvas erased a student's 95% score and replaced it with a 50% score even though Canvas says it will keep the highest score; this is due to the same programming error that has been pointed out over and over again in this thread. Here's the response that she got back from Canvas: "Thank you for the screenshots and your explanation. The Late Policy is behaving as designed. It is taking the score you've selected to keep, the Highest, and then applying the Late Policy Deduction has been set. If you choose to not have the Late Policy deduct points, your best option would be to remove the deduction from Grades. If you access their score for the assignment and click the arrow, it will allow you to remove the flag."

In other words, we're back to the "we programmed it that way, so what's the problem" line. Never mind that the way it's programmed makes no sense, and that no instructor in their right mind would apply late penalties in this way. If your product is so poorly designed that the best advice is to tell your customers to stop using a feature altogether, then maybe that's some indication that you should make fixing that feature a priority. It is truly unbelievable that after 2 years, Canvas still doesn't seem to even understand what the problem is.

[volzk]

Exactly.  

Because the status of this "idea" is "Archived," we can't even give a thumbs up to one another's comments anymore.  

But we are in this together...!!  

[jlevendi]

I've never seen a company less interested in fixing their own mistakes. They just don't care!!!

[james_whalley]

"Note from Instructure:

This idea no longer needs to be voted upon, as our engineers are addressing it as a bug. Please refer to New Gradebook, Late Policies, and Multiple Quiz Attempts ding On-Time submissions for more information."

This should be updated, as nothing is being addressed now, as they are shelving this issue.

As I added to the discussion on this topic:

"

As an update, we are experiencing the same bugs with late penalties and multiple submissions for Quizzes, New Quizzes, and have a related, but different, bug with Kaltura Quizzes and how they interact with marking late attempts when there are multiple attempts.

We have also heard that L2s don't think this needs to be worked on (despite affecting student grade integrity). Our customer service rep promises to take this as far as she can. She recognizes that it should not be on students or teachers to monitor all grades for accuracy and that the product should work.

I am no engineer, but, it seems that it's a simple order of operations issue. First, apply late penalty to late attempts. Second, compare attempts to determine highest score. Finally, display the proper score. How hard is that?"