Grading Inaccuracies

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daoudparker
Community Member

Canvas doesn't seem to provide an accurate total average grade for my student's quiz assignments.

I have a series of quizzes for my course which are part of an assignment group. Some of them are extra credit. Following earlier advice to deal with Canvas's lack of a proper extra credit category I changed those quizzes after they were scored from graded quiz to graded survey with total point value as zero. So an extra credit quiz that earned say 4 out of a possible 5 points would then be registered as 4 out of 0.  All of these points should add up in the same grading category but for some reason it looks like Canvas doesn't attribute them consistently.  As you can see from the two examples below, it doesn't totally ignore the extra credit ones but it also doesn't add them all. It's almost like it splits the difference.

With the student example that shows a 100% average for instance, if it ignored the extra credit the grade would be 29/36 or 80%.  If it accounted for all the extra credit it would be 42/36 or 116%.

Please let me know what is going on if you have an answer and how I might fix this.

Thanks!

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rmurchshafer
Community Champion

I don't have an answer but a suggestion which might help figure out whats happening.  Click on the score in the column for each of those examples so see what the actual points are as shown below.  Seeing how many points are being calculated out of how many available for each might help figure out  what's going on. 

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I've also found that when making some changes to an assignment such as how many points it worth, the results don't always update automatically.  With Roll Call Attendance for instance if you change the number of points it's worth,  the grades will be messed up until you take attendance again.  By changing the quizzes to practice quizzes worth 0, it could be something similar and going to Speedgrader and clicking through the grades might cause things to update.

Rick

 

 

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An alternative that might be easier and more reliable is to calculate how much the extra credit is able to influence the final grade.  What is the highest score that is possible for students to earn if they earn 100% on every thing graded, and also 100% of the extra credit points graded out of a total of zero?  If the answer is 110%, make an extra credit assignment group weighted at 10% (I see that you already have weighted assignment groups).  In that extra credit assignment group, assignments will count as extra credit, without needing to be calculated out of zero points. These extra credit assignments are a bonus because they make it possible to earn more than 100% in the course total.  You grade them exactly like every graded assignment.

Until you have one score in every weighted group, this will not look like extra credit at all.  I would simply explain that situation to students, so they know that any apparent penalty for not earning extra credit points will not last.  I would also remind them about whatif scores they can use to see the impact of future scores on their total.  However, if you want to avoid that, you can start out with the extra credit in a zero percent assignment group, and change the group's weight to the appropriate bonus percentage after there is at least one score in every other assignment group.

Also, I was taking for granted that your extra credit was in the quizzes group, you have weighted at 25%.  If you have the extra credit in an assignment group for which there is not yet a single graded submission that is graded out of anything more than zero points, the assignments graded out of zero points will not be tallied in the total yet.  In that case, as soon as you have one assignment graded out of anything more than zero, your course totals will include the extra credit.

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