New Quizzes should not *automatically* grade written responses

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

 

Any questions that teachers have to manually grade (essay, short answer) are automatically calculated as zeros in Quizzes.Next. There are 2 major issues with this:

 

     1. Student's grades are completely inaccurate until the teacher grades them. This can cause serious issues like suspension from a sports team due to grades, consequences at home, and unneeded anxiety and stress. Yes, I can mute the assignment so they don't see that grade at home, but administrators who are determining eligibility see it as part of the average. 

     2. Because Quizzes.Next considers this question already graded, as a teacher, I have no way of telling which responses I have graded and which I have not.  In the old Quiz system, it shows a document symbol in the gradebook and a little orange dot next to their name in Speedgrader to show that these questions still need to be graded.  When you are look at a specific student's quiz in Speed grader, it tells you what still needs to be graded, but still shows a check next to their name in the list, so you have to scroll through every student to see if it has been graded. With hundreds of students turning in assignments at different times this is not helpful.

 

Considering the old version has this, this is something that should have been fixed before it ever came out of Beta. It is a serious glitch in how Quizzes.Next interacts with the Canvas Gradebook. 

61 Comments
jennifer_files
Community Explorer

Exactly!! My middle schoolers freak out every time. And then I have to remind them I have to go back and give them points back.

kirsten_ryall
Community Participant

Hi there, this still appears to be an outstanding issue with manual-type questions. Has there been any progress? Kirsten

jennifervinson
Community Novice

This a great idea however I can't get that to show up on mine for some reason Smiley Sad

Nancy_Webb_CCSF
Community Champion

As a corollary to Quizzes.Next considers this question already graded, it seems a 100% essay question quiz shows a student that they've scored 0 points at the end of the quiz. Yes it also shows the number of questions that need review, but in the gradebook it just shows 0. This is not good for students!   In the classic gradebook, it shows an icon indicating it needs grading rather than a score, much better.  If its a quiz with mixed question types, they might see a very low score and think that's the final score.

Work around: make sure all new quizzes are set to manual posting of grades, and don't post until they are all scored.  But that shouldn't be necessary.  Maybe there's an idea about this gradebook problem, although it may take an LTI  update before something can be done. Am I right?

paul14
Community Participant

We're struggling with this issue too.

Students, on submission, are getting notifications that their assignment has been graded.

They get excited, jump in and check their marks and see it as incomplete. Then they inevitably either:

  • Call or email and ask what they did wrong
  • Try to resubmit the activity again (and again!)

It's a bit frustrating and time-wasting for both students and our team.

Has there been any progress on a fix for this?

raehale
Community Explorer

I very much would like to see this issue addressed by Canvas. Students are constantly worried about grades and this is a huge problem. This means that it will not only show incorrect grades, but that we are not notified of the submission to be able to manually fix the grade and must check continuously to fix it. 

This needs to be fixed asap. 

bourjaim
Community Participant

The fact that this has not been fixed yet is obscene.  Now that most schools are teaching remotely, this sort of problem is being magnified tenfold.  I'm going to start looking for a new option for my school.

sschuler
Community Explorer

I gave my first online quiz last month. The quiz consisted of just a few short-answer questions, for which I used the "Essay Question" feature.  Imagine my students' horror when, as soon as they submitted their quizzes, their grade displayed as -0-. As you can imagine, I spent a bit of time calming my students' nerves.  But with every quiz that contains an essay question, their grade drops because the ungraded questions default to 0.

"Classic Quizzes" didn't have this problem.  When students answer an essay question in "Classic Quizzes," the default grade is "ungraded," not zero.  This feature should be carried over into New Quizzes.

After some online searching, it seems that other kinds of instructor-graded questions may also have this problem. 

flee1
Community Participant

Agree with the OP and other commenters here. Additionally, the auto-grading will effect the student's total grave even though the quiz is not fully graded. I know that on the student's end the grades are hidden (if you set that option), however on my end it shows. This is very misleading for many reasons.

It would be nice if New Quizzes functions similarly to Classic quizzes in regards to posting grades. I realize this might not happen because New Quizzes is basically an LTI currently, and therefore does not talk to SpeedGrader/Canvas in the same manner. But it is my understanding that New Quizzes will eventually become to only option available and replace Classic. At that point, these grading considerations need to be put in place for when that happens.

cbaker3
Community Explorer

I am so mad, I am actually shaking: https://twitter.com/bakerhhhs/status/1312766790896881666?s=20