Keeping Track of Non-Contributing Assignment Points

[jeffrey_villine]

(MODS: Please see edits before marking as "solved.")

I have a category of grades in my class where, over the course of the semester, students need to score 250 points.

The average score on these assignments will be between 20-25 points, though exceptional, surprising, or insightful writing could score up to 30.

On average, it will take students about 10 assignments to get their points for this category. Really strong writers can do it in fewer assignments, but students who need more practice can still get all 250 points by doing more.

What I would like would be if the grade book would keep track of all the points earned in this category, but cap the final contribution at the number I set (working up to the final 250 point target at the end of the semester). What I mean by this is, if a student has earned 300 points in this category by the end of the semester, it's still going to be capped at 250. There is presently no function for this.

What I am doing now is flagging every assignment int his category as "does not contribute to final score." I then created an additional grade-book column (an "assignment" with no submission), where every few weeks I manually set the rising target and input the students' earned-to-date points in that category (capped at the current target). It's a bit of a kludge, but it works more or less.

What I've noticed is that even though every one of these assignments (I call the "Big Questions") is marked as part of the Big Question category, the Big Question grade category currently shows up as 0/0--since none of the assignments contribute to the final grade. This is annoying, because now whenever I want to update the points totals throughout the semester, I have to go back and add up their scores myself.

What I need is an ability to see all the points earned by each student in that category to date, even if it doesn't contribute to the final score. The closest I could do to this is turn off the "does not contribute" flag on all of my Big Questions, then set the course weights with every category except Big Questions. This won't work for me, though, because I don't weigh my grades: 10 points of a reading response is worth as much to the end grade as 10 points on their final essay. And as a lot of the smaller assignments throughout the semester are made on the fly in response to the individual course's needs, I can't predict from semester to semester how many points are going to be in each category in order to have that reflected in the percentage breakdown. I know I could make one giant grade category, such as "NOT Big Questions," put everything in it and give it a weight of 100%, but then I lose the ability to sort my assignments and view the grade book by category.

What would work, if not the function to set a cap for a category, would be the ability to flag an entire category as not contributing to the final score--so just so I can at least see on its grade book column how many points each student has in that category to date.

EDIT 1:

I was looking for some solution that didn't involve weighting, since I can't predict how many assignments I have in some of my categories from semester to semester, and I want 10 points to equal 10 points, regardless of category.

Back when I was at a school that used Blackboard, I seem to remember being able to put multiple categories into clusters--so I could put all my non-BQ categories into a 100% cluster and that weighting would not constrain the categories themselves. In other words, I could have a 0% BQ category without having to enforce strict demarcations between the other categories. I'd been looking to see if there was a similar function here that I was just overlooking, but I suppose not.

EDIT 2:

I have in the past used the "Drop __ lowest grades in this category" for these assignments, but I'm trying to achieve something different. I do not want my students to get only the points of the ten best submissions. I want them to earn 250 points in this category, regardless of how many submissions it takes them to do it. If they score 250 or less, I want Canvas to calculate that percentage. If they score more than 250, I want Canvas to cap the overage.

[ColtonSwapp]

Hello @jeffrey_villine 

I know that the gradebook will calculate a percentage for your assignment groups based on what is inside of them. If you are weighting them, it will make it so that any assignments within the categories will only account for whatever percentage you setup as far as the weights go. There currently is not a way to allow the the categories to display as points, but only as a percentage Unfortunately. For points earned by each student in that category to date, even if it doesn't contribute to the final score, you could weight the category at 0% and it will not be factored into the final grade, but it will display a percentage for any assignments within that category. 

One thing that came to mind as far as capping the final contribution at the number you set, was using a drop rule in the assignment group. You can have it drop the lowest or highest scores for any assignments based within the group. If your assignments amount to 300 points, but you only want to cap it at 250, you could tell the assignment group to drop the lowest scores so that it would only amount to 250 points. 

HERE is the guide on creating rules for an assignment group. 

[jeffrey_villine]

Thanks for the reply!

I was looking for some solution that didn't involve weighting, since I can't predict how many assignments I have in some of my categories from semester to semester, and I want 10 points to equal 10 points, regardless of category.

Back when I was at a school that used Blackboard, I seem to remember being able to put multiple categories into clusters--so I could put all my non-BQ categories into a 100% cluster and that weighting would not constrain the categories themselves. In other words, I could have a 0% BQ category without having to enforce strict demarcations between the other categories. I'd been looking to see if there was a similar function here that I was just overlooking, but I suppose not.

Thanks!

[jeffrey_villine]

Thank you for confirming that Canvas does not have this function. As I said in the post, weighting as implemented does not meet my needs.

I have in the past used the "Drop __ lowest grades in this category" for these assignments, but I'm trying to achieve something different. I do not want my students to get only the points of the ten best submissions. I want them to earn 250 points in this category, regardless of how many submissions it takes them to do it. If they score 250 or less, I want Canvas to calculate that percentage. If they score more than 250, I want Canvas to cap the overage.

Perhaps I've been directed to the wrong portion of Canvas. I thought the question forum was where we requested new features.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello @jeffrey_villine ...

If you would like to submit a new Feature Idea here in the Community, you can click on the "Roadmap" menu item at the top of any page here in the Community, and then under the "Idea Conversations" heading click "Canvas".  There is a "Suggest an idea" button on the page that appears where you can start formulating your idea.  It will also search your topic name to see if any similar feature ideas exist ... in which case you would want to contribute to the existing Feature Idea discussion rather than creating your own.  You can read more about all of this using the following Guides:

• How do idea conversations work in the Instructure Community?
• What is the feature development process for Instructure products?
• How do I create a new idea conversation in the Instructure Community?

Hope this helps a bit!

[Ron_Bowman]

@jeffrey_villine -

I'm not sure if any of the following is of any help - more of my trying to understand exactly what you are doing.  I use weighted categories - which you cannot do for your set up.  I am amazed (as in I never thought of that as a possibility - which gets me to thinking about issues in a different way) every now and then about some of the ways people are using/trying to use Canvas.

That was a very good write up on an interesting problem (that I am glad I do not have).  Because you are using a points based gradebook, and the students are capped at 250 points for the Big Question category is there any reason to keep adding points to their total in the column you update periodically?  In other words do the students still have to participate on assignments after reaching 250 points?  Or do they get to stop?.  

If so, I guess you disallow all the assignments in the big question group and just use your one column in the gradebook - my guess is that this is what you are doing, and you don't want to do it manually.  Rather set up some gradebook rules and have canvas do it automatically on all the assignments in the Big Question Category.

As @Chris_Hofer stated you could create a feature request it would take a good write up to explain what the gradebook needs to do.