Dropping the lost grade and unsubmitted assignments

[Luara]

I'm trying to figure out how the drop lowest assignment feature works in an assignment group. Students are required to write 4 responses over the course of the semester, but they have 7 opportunities to do this. I have 7 assignments set up with different due dates. I was told by IT to set this up as 7 assignments with 3 lowest dropped. For those who chose not to submit to the first deadline, there's now a dash in the gradebook. Does that count as a low grade? Or, do I have to manually enter a 0 to get it to recognize it as a grade to be dropped? I hesitate to enter a 0 because it looks like the student did something wrong, and their grade won't be accurate.

Using the LMS at my previous school (D2L), you had to manually link assignments to the gradebook, so I just set up assignments that weren't linked to the gradebook and then entered the grades manually (I only made 4 spots in the gradebook rather than 7). I was told you can't do that in Canvas because all the assignments are automatically linked to the gradebook, and you can't create columns in the gradebook without also creating assignments.

I'm trying the drop-3 as a work around, unless I can figure out something better.

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @Luara,

You would need to enter a 0 at some point before the end of the course for the drop the lowest 3 rule to work.  If you leave the dash, Canvas would essentially treat it like an excused assignment, so it would drop the lowest 3 graded works for each student, leaving them with only one assignment actually counting.  You don't necessarily have to enter the 0's right now if you think it sill cause students to panic, but definitely remember to do that once the due date for all 7 assignments has passed.

Hope this helps!

-Chris

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @Luara,

You would need to enter a 0 at some point before the end of the course for the drop the lowest 3 rule to work.  If you leave the dash, Canvas would essentially treat it like an excused assignment, so it would drop the lowest 3 graded works for each student, leaving them with only one assignment actually counting.  You don't necessarily have to enter the 0's right now if you think it sill cause students to panic, but definitely remember to do that once the due date for all 7 assignments has passed.

Hope this helps!

-Chris

[Luara]

Ah, that is tricky! There's got to be a better way to do this. Is there any way at all to create  assignments that don't automatically populate to the grade book and/or to create columns in the grade book that don't link to assignments? I essentially want 7 submission boxes (we just called them dropboxes in D2L), but there should only be 4 columns in the grade book that I can manage manually.

[James · Accepted solution]

@Luara, I see that you asked this question in at least two other threads, so you likely know what I'm about to say, but I wanted to add it in case someone else stumbled across this message first.

I wanted to add a little more detail to what @chriscas wrote.

Many years ago, a once common misconception people had was that "drop 3" means "keep 4" and that is only true when all assignments had scores. A feature idea that came through several times was to add "Keep the n best assignments." Canvas already supports "Drop the n lowest assignments." 

What you are attempting to do is to keep the four best assignments. If option was available, then you would not need to enter zeros for anything, you could just put in the grades as the students do them and ignore the rest. Unfortunately for you, Canvas doesn't have that option.

Since the "keep the n highest grades" isn't an option, let's look at what you will have to do to make your scenario work.

Keep these two thoughts in mind: Canvas only calculates grades based on assignments that actually have scores and it will never drop all of the scores. 

Assignments with dashes do not count as they do not have a score. They are missing, rather than excused, but they are treated the same way by the gradebook -- they are ignored in the calculations. You can leave an assignment as missing or mark it as excused. The impact on the gradebook is the same, while they have different impacts on what the student sees outside the gradebook.

The harder-to-understand concept is on when grades are dropped.

Since you have seven assignments and are dropping three, none of the scores will be dropped until there are at least two graded assignments. People may think that if the rule is to "drop 3" that it only starts happening after there are four. Again, those people are imagining a "keep the highest" rule rather than "drop the lowest." A drop three lowest grades means that with four scores, only one is kept.

If you do not put in zeros as Chris wrote, then you will be dropping grades that should be kept and the student's will only reflect the one assignment. Once there are five assignments, then it will use the best two. It will only use the best four, which is what you want, until they have completed all seven or you enter zeros for the missing grades.

To repeat -- if you have a rule to drop the three lowest grades, a student does all four assignments, and you don't put in zeros, then only their best assignment will count. This is true even at the end of the term. You must put in zeros for those missing grades or the rule doesn't work.

Explain the situation to the students. Communication is always best. Tell them that you have to put in zeros in order to get Canvas to drop the grades and accurately reflect their scores. Explain that they can still do the assignment and that their zero will get replaced with their score once the assignment is complete.

Now comes the question about when the actions should be taken.

• Some faculty wait until the end of the term to add the rule to drop three grades. Until that point, they leave the missing assignments as missing (dash) and so the student is only graded based on what they have completed. At the end of the term, they warn the students, add the rule to drop three grades, go to the gradebook, use the Set Default Grade option to put in zeros (making sure not to override existing grades). This approach doesn't affect those who completed exactly four assignments and gives a potential boost to those who completed more than four. If you have students who have completed less than four, then it drops their grade and you run the risk of students complaining "I didn't know" what their their accurate grade was and they would have worked harder and it's all your fault.
• Some faculty have the rule to drop the grade in place at the beginning of the semester. I do this so that I don't have to worry about remembering to do it at the end of the semester. I also have due dates on every assignment and I have Canvas configured to automatically put in zeros for missing assignments. The students have an accurate representation of their grade once there are more assignments than are being dropped. When I drop three, it's in an assignment group that has about thirty assignments, so it doesn't take long, although for the first four assignments, only the top assignment so far is being kept. In your situation, only one grade would be kept until you have five assignments that are past due. That seems like it would be a significant portion of the term before that would happen and so it's probably not a good idea for you to implement it this way.
• Some faculty go through and put in zeros for all assignments at the beginning of the semester using the set default grade option in the gradebook. They feel that students start at 0 and earn points rather than starting at 100% and removing them. If you use a points-based gradebook and instead of a weighted gradebook this can be made to work. That takes clear communication to the students though. You have to tell them (1) you need x points to get an A and (2) ignore what Canvas says your grade is because it is based off percentages. Tell them they will need to look at the total points and compare it to the syllabus where you have defined the points needed. It is confusing to students, so clear communication is important.
• Some faculty do not use a rule to drop grades at all. They wait until the end of the term and then go through and put an excused grade for the ones they want to drop. This removes the automatic approach Canvas offers with dropping grades. Determining which grade to drop is easy if all assignments count the same number of points, but if not, then faculty may end up dropping the wrong assignment. While this sounds simplistic, you are also losing the grade for that student's submission when you change the grade.

If your assignments come due at different points in the term as opposed to having a flexible do any seven at any time (structure and order are generally better for students than open-ended assignments with no due dates), there are a couple of other approaches you could use.

• This is an alternative to my first approach where I said to wait until the end of the semester to apply the rule to drop grades. If there are clear due dates for the assignments, even though some are optional, then you could wait until the due date on the first four assignments has passed. Then apply the rule and set the default grades to zero for all seven assignments. The issue here is that for students who had planned on doing a later assignment, their grade is lowered. That can have a positive or a negative impact. It might wake up students who had been slacking because they weren't doing the assignments. On the downside, it can freak students out whose grade drops. But it's better to get that wake-up call in the middle of the term, while there's still time to do something about it, than at the end when it's too late.
• Some faculty could (I don't know of any who do) go through and modify the rule about how many grades to drop throughout the term. This would work if you had the gradebook configured to automatically assign zeros for missing assignments, otherwise you would need to put the zeros in yourself. Until there are four grades, none are dropped, keeping all four. Once there are five, then one is dropped, leaving four. When there are six grades, then two are dropped, leaving four. When all seven grades are in, then drop three, leaving the top four. That requires the faculty to take action, but provides students with a clearer idea of what their grade will be. You still have to put zeros in for those past-due and missing assignments that are otherwise the students get an inflated score. That means setting the default grade to zero or using the automatic feature for missing grades that Canvas has.

I can think of some other ways to do things, but they get even more convoluted than what I've listed above.

Whatever you do, you will need to put in zeros for missing assignments at some point and you should clearly, and likely more than once, communicate what you are doing to students.

[Luara]

This is EXTREMELY helpful, thank you so much! I would never have guessed that that's how the grade book worked, just because it's so different from the other 3 LMSs I've used at other universities. Getting the "theory" of the LMS is difficult to teach yourself. I did not realize you could add rules after assignments had already begun to populate. Like you, I would be worried about forgetting to do that, but it's good to know.

I figure everything I do this semester is an experiment until I figure this out. I just want to decrease the amount of potential distress for my students as I do. Thank you again for this extremely detailed explanation!

[Luara]

I have this question, too! I have an assignment with 7 potential deadlines, but students only have to do 4 of them, so I was told to set this up as 7 assignments with the drop the lowest 3 rule. Right now, for students who didn't turn in the first one, I didn't give them a score (so it's a dash instead of a 0 in the gradebook). I'm wondering if the dashes will be counted as the lowest scores or if the lowest scores will come from the 4 submitted (meaning only the highest will count). Should I manually entered the 0s? That will throw off the student's current grade. They shouldn't have a 0 if they're choosing their 4 assignments later.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @Luara ...

This really isn't an answer to your question, but as @James and I both noticed, you had posted two similar questions in other places here in the Community.  So that we didn't have several conversations going on about the same topic in all three topics, I've gone ahead and moved your other two questions to this topic.  It looks like you've gotten some great help from @chriscas and James, so I think you're in good hands!  But, I wanted to let you know I had moved you other two questions over here.  🙂

[Luara]

I was searching for this question. Can you clarify your response? So, if you leave scores blank, those scores are the ones that get dropped? Or does canvas drop the lowest attempted scores? My students have to write 4 responses, but there are 7 potential due dates for them, so they can choose which 4 to do. I was told to set this up as 7 assignments, dropping the lowest 3. But, I don't want to put in 0s for those who chose not to respond to the first deadline. That seems like it would make their current grade inaccurate until all the grades are populated. So, you're saying that unattempted assignments count as lowest scores? Even though they're not 0s.