How do I leave the maximum exam grade at 120 in the average columns of gradebook?

[mgershman]

My Exam 2 has 60 questions worth 2 points each.  The best possible score is 120. 

The gradebook handles this fine for the individual exams.  However, when calculating the average of the three exams, Canvas normalizes the grade to 100 by dividing by 120% (1.2).  How do I stop this?

If I export, edit and import the average exam grades column, are there any rules I should know?  Can I edit the Canvas formula for the average exam grades column? 

I don't like making manual changes outside of Canvas because it make the final grade impossible to audit.

[chriscas]

Hi @mgershman,

The way the assignment group columns in the Canvas gradebook work is by taking the total number of points a student earned in all of the assignments in that group and dividing by the total number of points possible for those assignments.  So a student who got 60/80 on exam 1 and then 120/120 on exam 2 would show a group total of 90% ((60+120)/(80+120)).  Without group weights enabled, this is just a number to show how well students did in a particular category overall (by percentage, not points), as the total course grade percentage would be all assignment points earned divided by number of points possible for those assignments.  If you enable weights, the percentages shown in that column would be multiplies by the group weights, and then those added up to make the total course grade percentage.

I hope this helps explain things a bit.

-Chris

[mgershman]

Thanks very much for your reply.  I understand the formula in Canvas. One of the Instructure CSRs explained it to me. The workaround is to give extra credit questions a weight of zero.

In this case, there are no designated extra credit questions.  I just want every question to count for two points.  If it occasionally brings the score over 100, that's OK.  This allowed me to use a variety of questions that are hard for different students.  I was congratulating myself on the exam results when a student asked about the exam average score in the gradebook.

I hope there is a Canvas solution or I'm going to have a busy time recalculating the exam averages during finals week.

[chriscas]

Hi @mgershman,

Thanks for the clarification that you're trying to offer a quiz with 120 points possible but only want it to count as being out of 100 points (I think).  Right now, I don't know of a good way to make this happen without a lot of manual work, as quizzes in Canvas really are set up to be grades as a sum of all of the questions in the quiz.  The general workaround has been to make some questions worth 0 points (in your case, you'd need 50 questions worth 2 points, and 10 questions worth 0), then you go in and manually give 2 points for each of those 0 point questions if students got them correct.  If it was just one question, it's not too bad to do, but I know that's going to be cumbersome to do for 10 questions for each student.

I also wanted to quickly say that when exporting/importing the gradebook CSV, you will not be able to change the total columns for assignment groups, as those are just calculated values inside of Canvas itself.

Do you happen to be using weighing for assignment groups?  If so, it would be somewhat easy to just make things work by just increasing the weight of your exams by 20% and having the total weight for the course be over 100%.

It's possible someone else will be able to chime in on this with some suggestions I have not thought of or seen before as well...

-Chris

[SusanNiemeyer]

My advice to you is to rethink the 120 points. Just have two questions worth 50 points each. Your point system doesn't work for Canvas, and it will be confusing to your students. 

Sometimes, the best solution is not to search for a complicated "work around," but to create a grading scheme that is simple and clear.