How do I grade certain students and not others on an assignment without it negatively impacting the ones who aren't being graded?

[taliabombola]

I have a 16 week course and students get to pick 10 weeks out of said 16 weeks they would like to complete a reaction paper. For the students who choose not to submit on a given week, how do I go about grading this so there is no negative impact on their grade?

Conversely, how would I input the students who have completed the assignment's grades?

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

Hi,  @taliabombola  Welcome to the Canvas Community! I used to do something very much like this* when I was teaching. I used weighted assignment groups to calculate the course grade. I placed all 16 assignments in a single assignment group and set a rule for the group so that it drops the lowest X scores (in my case, I dropped 2, but you'll want to set it to drop 6). Once you've done that, you can grade in the usual fashion, making sure to enter zeros for students who do not submit (those will presumably be the lowest scores that will be dropped). You can read more about it in How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups?  and https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-9880-4152232976 

*I actually allowed students to effectively skip two weeks by setting the same "Drop the lowest 2" rules on the weekly reflection assignments, the weekly matching quizzes, and the weekly multiple choice quizzes, and explained this in the course syllabus.