[ARCHIVED] How to override the point total for a quiz?

[mpanitz]

I've got a quiz (an exam, really).  I've got 5 questions, each worth 25 points.  Canvas thinks the exam is worth 125 points and normally it would be.

HOWEVER

I have instructions for the students telling them to pick only 4 out of the 5 questions (the idea being that they can spend more time on each question but they won't lose a ton of points if they happen to be weak on the limited number of questions I'm asking).
(Side-note: the students can ONLY answer 4 questions.  I mean, they can answer all 5 but only 4 will be graded)

How do I tell Canvas that I want the quiz (exam) to be worth 100 points, instead of the sum of the questions?

[James · Accepted solution]

 @mpanitz  

With Classic Quizzes, the point values of the quiz is determined by the questions within the quiz. You cannot override it being the sum of the point values, but you can adjust the point values so that the sum is what you want.

This is especially easy if the questions are essay questions that are not automatically graded so that you have to put the scores in yourself. It can be done even if the questions are auto-graded, but then you will need to go through and manually override the values. It sounds like there is some manual intervention required since you say you will only grade 4 of the 5 questions.

The easiest way way to accomplish what you want to do is to make each of the five questions worth 20 points. That gives you the 100 points you want. Then when you grade them, grade the four questions out of 25 points each. Make sure the students still know to only answer 4 of them as before.

If you are using weighted assignment groups, then there is another way. Not as convenient as the first way, but doable. Create an assignment group worth 0% of the grade and put the quiz into that category. Then, in the assignment group that the quiz would normally go, create a fake assignment to hold the score for the quiz. Make it worth 100 points and make it a "on paper" or "no submission" submission type so that students can't actually submit anything. Once they have taken the quiz and you have graded it, transfer the score to the placeholder assignment.

Anytime you do something out of the ordinary, be sure to explain to the students what is going on.

I haven't used New Quizzes much, but I did play around with this once. Here's what was true at that point (it was within the last six months, so it's probably still true). With New Quizzes, the point value is determined by the assignment and not the quiz questions. New Quizzes is an external tool (LTI) that passes a percentage back to Canvas and then Canvas scales that by the points the assignment is worth.