Rubric option to subtract points for late work.

(7)

I would like to have the option to add a row in the rubric to subtract points for work being late.

 

There  is not  a way that I have come up with to do that.  I tried creating a rubric with minus points; that didn't work.

In the quizzes, there is a calculation that can be made using the fudge box at the end of the quiz.  I can enter minus points and then the calculation is automatically done when the score updates. It seems something similar should work in a rubric.

The row, in my imagination, would look something  like this and it would be the last row in the rubric:

Late work   Does not apply  Grace Period     1 day late       2 days late      3 days late    additions day late  

                             0                         0                -5 points        -10 points       -15 points       -5 per day

Or, maybe, simply:

Late work    Minus 5% per day.

It's a computer, there has to be an easy way for a computer to do that simple calculation automatically when given the conditions to do it; however, this is not my field of study so I could be completely wrong. 

57 Comments
Tasha_Biesinger
Community Contributor

Great idea,  @anita_webb ‌. It seems like some of the Rubric feature ideas are currently in Product Radar 

so maybe this could be bundled into their Rubric rework as well?

I remembered seeing a conversation about this very topic from  @lynchs  so for whatever its worth :Rubric with Negative Points

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

 @anita_webb ‌

My question would be, does it need to be at the rubric level.  Would something like https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1054-deduct-x-or-x-points-per-day-for-each-day-an-assignment-s... that is built into the submission, or gradebook, be a solution?

thompsli
Community Champion

This would be nice because I could see other reasons why one might want to be able to deduct points when using a rubric in addition to late work. For example, I expect students to submit many of their assignments as Google Docs shared using Link Sharing with "can edit" turned on. Being able to deduct points when this is not done (without giving out "free" points for everyone that does it) would help to better enforce the expectation.

My current rubrics tend to be 5/4/2/0 (All/most/some/none) Accuracy and 5/4/2/0 Explanation/Justification (these are for math problems where they need to explain their process and justify their answer). It would be nice to be able to add a third line for "follows course submission expectations" 0/-1/-2 for whether or not they've turned things in correctly. (I don't want to give everyone 2 points for turning in a totally unrelated Google Doc with the correct settings, so I don't want to change my other 2 categories to be 4/3/2/0 and add a "course expectations" category with 2/1/0 (all/some/none), which is the only way to do this right now.)

anita_webb
Community Novice

Linnea, I understand you comments. However, I have found it useful to use a line in the rubric for meets expectations and another for meets requirements

  • Requirements includes correct format for the assignment and following directions to submit the document (Word.doc, APA style formatting for essays, other formatting for other kinds of assignments).  
  • Expectations, I use for elements related to grammar, logical organization, punctuation, spelling, word choice, and the like. I don't teach composition, however, passing a composition course is a prerequisite for the course I teach.  Work is evaluated on those elements.

They are graded on

  • Meets requirements/expectations  (30 points - A work)
  • Meets most...(26 points - B work)
  • Meets some...(22 points - C work)
  • Needs improvement  (18 points - D work)

A zero can be earned but usually if there is an  attempt at meeting expectations  or requirements some points are earned. These two categories are equally weighted for grading and together are 60 points of 200 possible. 

What I am wanting added is a line that will show the points deducted for being submitted late.  I like the ideas suggesting calculating a percentage but, the idea of deducting points is fine, too.

nancy_lachance
Community Contributor

I would agree with Linnea - That this functionality should be open. There are a number of reasons one might want to subtract points from a score and limit the number of points subtracted.  For example, you might subtract 1 point for each spelling error up to -5 points.  Or you might wish to subtract 5 points for not meeting a "number of posts" requirement in a discussion (or first post by Wednesday).  Rubrics are a powerful tool that I am busily convincing faculty to adopt, and I would really like to see this additional functionality that would make it even more powerful.

kmeeusen
Community Champion

Hi  @anita_webb ‌

I already do this with rubrics using a very simple work-round. I created a criteria for "Timely Submission" with only two rating levels: Submitted by due date = 5 points, Not submitted by due date = 0 points. Essentially, I have made timely submission a component of the grade to be earned, rather than a subtraction from the grade earned for all other criteria.

I like that this is positive-centric rather than negative-centric, but then we all have our own ways of teaching and our own needs.

I hope this helps,

Agent K

nancy_lachance
Community Contributor

Thanks, Kelley! I can certainly see the point, but our faculty does not want to give points for meeting this particular requirements.  They are working with future nurses and wish to stress that you will not get rewarded for meeting expectations but will have consequences for not meeting them.   I think when you are educating persons going into a field where the consequences of not playing by the rules can cause death (potentially) you have a somewhat different perspective.

kmeeusen
Community Champion

Nancy:

I also teach for health career programs, and my perspective is to make the expected behaviors a requirement - reward when they meet the requirement, punish when they don't, and for the same exact reason; people's health and well being are at stake.

Just different approaches to the same overall philosophy!

Agent K

James
Community Champion

Thanks  @kmeeusen , you almost convinced me to vote for the idea. For now, I'm going to hold off and see how it develops.

It reminds me of the workflow Avi Naiman described when we first started working on QuizWiz together. He likes to start with full points and take off points for things missed, rather than awarding points for things done right -- and he wanted things to default to being full points, that is, he didn't want to have to click to set the full points. I can see how some might appreciate a similar negated approach to Rubrics. About the closest thing you could do for now is to not check the box that allows you to use the rubric for grading and then manually decide on a grade based on all of the little things that people have checked off as being wrong with the assignment. 

From a technical perspective, the code for Canvas blocks any negative values in rubrics. Actually, you can go down to -1, but I think that's more a programming logic error that a conscious decision to allow negative points, but only down to -1, and so I don't recommend people use it.  If this current feature idea does go into production, someone be sure to let me know so I can update the rubric importer I wrote as right now, it makes sure that no rubric values are negative. I have not looked at any of the logic in Canvas to know if having a negative value would cause problems. However, enough of them would cause you to throw the entire assignment into negative points. I think that was another feature request somewhere as well, I just can't find it right now.

Back in Sep 2015, there was a feature idea about rubrics: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/3022" modifiedtitle="true" title="*Rubric scoring is inaccurat...  (it's now in cold storage). There was an interesting discussion that followed where you (Kelley) and Jared Stein chimed in.

kmeeusen
Community Champion

OMG, James, I hope you found that old post in a current search and are not referencing it from memory! If the later, then I am totally humiliated and ready to retire to a dementia care center. Of course, now I have to go check that one, and see what I said.

Because there is, to me, an acceptable dichotomy in the two approaches to the same grading philosophy, I could support this FI also, but...............

I really like to be careful with the core Canvas functionality to avoid feature bloat like some LMSs.

Agent K

James
Community Champion

I remembered that Jared had chimed in about rubrics at some point. The rest was a search based on that.

You had some really interesting things to say. It was back in your "don't hold back" days. I didn't realize that your school considered anything below 80% to be a failure. 

At Project Khaki, I received confirmation that one of the design goals of Canvas is to remain simple and relatively easy to use and not add checkboxes for all kinds of options that clutter the interface. So I agree on avoiding feature bloat. 

I don't know that this feature idea would bloat things. I haven't done a full analysis to see what's necessary, but from a design perspective, I don't see an impediment to allowing negative point values in a rubric. It wouldn't be any extra bells or whistles or checkboxes or anything. However, don't come to my InstructureCon presentation expecting to find that's the latest thing I've written because you'll be disappointed.

From a pedagogical perspective, there may be reasons for not allowing negative values.  don't know, but you've got to at least consider that someone asked the question when rubrics were being developer about negative point values and that they made a conscious decision to not allow them. It may have been as simple as (e.g.) only 0.5% of people want to use negative point values in a rubric, so it's more likely to catch an error by not allowing them. It may also be that they didn't want to have a text slider that went to negative infinity, so it was for the ease of use.  On the other hand, I think I heard someone say "Rubrics need a lot of love" while I was at Project Khaki in April. Of course, that might have been Communication. Maybe it was Outcomes. Perhaps it was Quizzes. It might have been Discussions. I don't think it was the Community, though.

Sometimes I would like to be a fly on the wall during development meetings and then we would know the reasons. Well, that is until someone took a flyswatter because I was too annoying. It's too easy for us to second guess what others do without having all of the information (anyone say course card color overlays?) and they're considering things from multiple inputs that we would never even think to consider so it's hard for us to understand everything that goes into the way things are.

kmeeusen
Community Champion

Yeah, we are a tech college, and the vast majority of our programs and courses require 80%+ so while a generalization, it is not far off the mark.

Do you mean to say that I have somehow mellowed with age and now "hold back"? I may have to check my insurance and see if they cover that dementia unit after all.

While online pedagogy really is one of my skills, I am not sure I see a significant pedagogical reason for supporting or not supporting either perspective. For me it is a case of six-of-one and a half-dozen of the other. Either grading scenario clearly informs the student that timely submission is an expectation, and that is what is important.

Agree about the fly-on-wall comment, except in that office I suspect we would be ducking Nerf bullets all day.

Agent K

anita_webb
Community Novice

 @kmeeusen ‌ and Nancy, I agree with you on expectations and requirements.  

Our grading rules do not allow for redistribution of points, thus, I would not have anywhere to draw from for adding points for meeting expectations and requirements. If I did have that option, your solutions is smart thinking.

What I am asking for is a way to deduct points in the rubric for an otherwise ungraded element (the late work penalty is not content or composition, which are graded elements) . The current means I use is to calculate the grade and  then write a short message in comments to explain to the student the reason the points earned in the rubric are not the same as the points earned for the assignment.  

While it is not higher math to calculate a 5% per day late work penalty, I would just as soon have a computer calculate it, after all, isn't that what computers do best - calculate numbers.  -Anita 

kmeeusen
Community Champion

Hi Anita:

Ignore the philosophical discussions from all of us hacks that really don't solve your immediate needs! Especially from me, as I tend to digress and am often prone to hopping on a soapbox and engaging in verbal extravagances.

It is a good idea, and I suspect from previous similar ideas that it should garner good support.

However, to digress, I thought that what computers do best is wage a war of extinction on humans. But then, I watch way too much TV.

Agent K

anita_webb
Community Novice

Kelly, I appreciate your humor.  I watch those same movies and have the same thoughts at  times.There are days when I feel like the computer has already taken my place, then it misbehaves and I have to take it to task. -Anita

ProfessorBeyrer
Community Coach
Community Coach

This is a great idea. It would make it so much easier than adding a zero-point criterion to a rubric and using that to subtract the points ( @anita_webb  Thank You for asking the question during my Canvas Klatch (July 25)‌ office hours. Smiley Happy).

It would be great if I had the option to decide whether that 5%/day penalty was taken off the score actually earned by the student or taken off the points possible for the assignment. Canvas knows the due date, the end date, and the points possible for the assignment. And a day has 24 hours no matter where we are.

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

 @anita_webb  

There are new Late Policies that are currently in the Canvas Beta Release Notes (2017-12-18).  Deductions are not built into rubrics, but you may find that these new policies will meet your needs?  Take a look and let us know.

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

Late Policies is now available in https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-13886 

Jess_M
Community Participant

This would also be great for word count penalties (for when students are under/over the allocated word count range), and other penalties that may apply. 

cholling
Community Champion

I'm going to be a dummy here ... why wouldn't you, in the case of a late assignment, simply not award all of the points allowed or adjust the grade in the gradebook. Or, in the case of word count, add a criterion for word count and not award full points if they didn't meet the objective. It seems that go over a specified criterion is just as inaccurate as being under the criterion.