This is a simple idea with a minor change, but I think improves the UI design and user experience.
Whenever I submit a quiz with essay questions, I'm immediately alarmed at my low score. This is until I remind myself that the score only shows the points that I have collected so far, and that I will probably get more once the teacher grades the essays. It always bugs me that a glance at the current score field does not reveal this, and that a simple UI improvement could fix this issue.
The idea is simple. Let's say I have a 10 point quiz, 7 points for MC questions, and 3 points for an essay. If I submit this quiz, and I got 5 MC questions correct, the Current Score field shows, "Current Score: 5 out of 10 * ". I propose that it should instead appear as:
Current Score: 5 ~ 8 / 10 *
Likewise, instead of the footnote reading, " * Some questions not yet graded", I propose it read something like:
* Possible score range as some questions are not yet graded
This change presents additional information about the student's grade on the quiz that they otherwise would have to calculate manually, namely what their maximum possible score is. I think that is enough reason alone to implement this idea. In addition, it makes it obvious that this quiz has not been fully graded yet, such that even a glance could see that.
The rest of this post is about design decisions that I considered.
The reason I used a tilde (~) instead of a dash ( - ) is because a dash might be confused as a minus sign or some kind of numeric code from a glance. A tilde does not have the connotations of a math operation or numeric code, so a glance doesn't easily suggest such confusing meanings. Instead, a tilde has a connotation of being an approximation, and not a specific value, which is very fitting in this case. I.E., the score is somewhere between 5 and 8.
I replaced the phrase "out of" with a simple bolded slash ( / ) for two reasons. First, the slash is commonly used notation for fractions and test scores, so it wouldn't be confusing to see such a notation used on Canvas. Secondly, the slash uses less space, so large scores will fit better than if the phrase "out of" is used. For example, (and yes, I've had teachers use scores that go this high):
Current Score: 705 ~ 955 / 1000 *
To assist the eyes, I put four spaces left of the bolded slash, as this helps group the numbers on the left together. The two numbers on the left are more relevant to students than the total score on the right. I also used a bolded slash because it looks more fitting typographically that way.
Lastly, I want to say that this change doesn't remove anything. As it stands now, the Current Score field shows identical information to the Kept Score field just below it. If the change I outlined is implemented, the Current and Kept Score fields will finally have a meaningful difference. The Kept Score field could be updated graphically to match the style of the Current Score field, such as, "Kept Score: 705 / 1000". This might ruin the original alignment, but keeping everything right-aligned should still look very pleasing (although, the kept score field might need padding spaces on the right to compensate for the asterisk shown on the Current Score field).
