Partial Credit for Multiple Answers - ALL OR NOTHING!!

[arthur_maturo_2]

SO it seems that something has changed in Canvas. The multiple-answer no longer gives partial credit OR there's some other setting that needs to be changed.

I've spent a couple hours trying to figure out how to get canvas to score a multiple answer question with partial credit. It WILL NOT work. I designed a question that has one correct answer, three choices, worth 1 point, but it will not score .5 or 1/2. Okay, so maybe that's a design flaw. Cool. Same question set up: one correct answer, three choices, worth 2 points. Nope. No partial credit here either. Okay. So maybe there MUST be two correct answers. Still a design flaw. But, let's test: two correct answers, three possible answers (one is wrong), 2 points. Nope. No partial credit. It seems that every question is an all or nothing setting and Canvas did not place that particular setting in a intuitive place (like so many other problems with Canvas that lack an intiutive design).

So does anyone know where I can adjust the all-or-nothing scoring in Canvas quizzes?

[kmeeusen · Accepted solution]

Hi @arthur_maturo_2 

This answer is only for traditional Quizzes in Canvas, and not New Quizzes

This is the answer provided in the lesson, How do I create a Multiple Answers quiz question?,

"To calculate scores for Multiple Answers quiz questions, Canvas divides the total points possible by the amount of correct answers for that question. This amount is awarded for every correct answer selected and deducted for every incorrect answer selected. No points are awarded or deducted for correct or incorrect answers that are not selected. For example, an instructor may create a Multiple Answer quiz question with 9 points possible that includes three correct choices and two incorrect choices. If a student selects two correct answers and one incorrect answer, they would be awarded 3 total points for that question. This would be calculated by awarding 3 points (9 total points divided by 3 correct answers) for each correct answer and subtracting 3 points for the incorrect answer.."

Bottom line: Canvas is giving partial points for a correct answer, but is also deducting points for incorrect answers, and there is no way to change this.

Kelley

[arthur_maturo_2]

What is a "New Quiz" and where do I access it? All I see in my canvas page is QUIZ and there's no other option. Moreover, when I create a quiz I am not given the option of creating a "New Quiz". So where are these unicorns, these mythical beasts that seem to appear only in those dreamed up realms of fantasy?

[Stef_retired]

@arthur_maturo_2  You'll find resources for the new quiz tool in the New Quizzes User Group and the New Quizzes chapter of the Instructor Guide; a search on "new quizzes" in this forum will bring up additional resources. If you don't see the ability to enable the new quiz tool in the settings area of your course, please reach out to your local Canvas admin for guidance on its availability at your school.

[Stef_retired]

@arthur_maturo_2  As Kelley has detailed, this is the scoring method used in Classic (Old) Quizzes. New Quizzes provides robust scoring options for multiple answer questions:  How do I create a Multiple Answer question in New ...

[matthewthomas]

I am glad to hear that Multiple Answer questions now have the option of partial credit, but I would not call that a 'robust' option. Canvas still only allows one method of applying its partial credit option, whereas, I have a method that I much prefer. I'm sure this has been mentioned before, but Moodle (in the way back times) has the ability for us to give credit and penalties individually to each item for maximum flexibility. I'd love to see something like that--or at least a few partial credit options--worked into New Quizzes.

My method (FWIW): credit for correct answers is +proportion of correct answers and penalty for incorrect answers is -proportion of all answers. For example, if a question has 5 choices, 3 of which are correct, each correct option would add 1/3 of the point value for the question while each incorrectly chosen answer would deduct 1/5 of the point value of the question.

[KatieAbrams]

I would like to be able to score partial credit similarly!

[tladd]

I have the opposite problem. I don't want to give any credit unless all the answers to question are correct. In the settings New Quizzes is disabled, so why is Canvas giving partial scores and how do I stop it.

[ChemCzarina]

Under Grading, which appears below the question and choices, there are two options to select from:

🔘 Partial Credit with Penalty

🔘 Exact Match

While I haven't tried, I'd venture to guess that if you don't want to give any partial credit you'd select Exact Match.

[ChemCzarina]

Under Grading, which appears below the question and choices, there are two options to select from:

🔘 Partial Credit with Penalty

 🔘 Exact Match 

While I haven't tried, I'd venture to guess that if you don't want to give any partial credit you'd select Exact Match.

[KipHaggerty]

Other LMS's also offer a partial credit option of equal weighting (or some other equivalent name) where the student would get an equal amount (say 1 out of 4 points) for correctly selecting an item that is correct (or True) and for not selecting an item that is incorrect (or false). Under that partial credit scheme, the answers given in the original post above would have 2 correct and 2 incorrect answers. He would have gotten 1 selected correctly and one unselected correctly resulting in a score of 2/4. This drove me nuts when I used Canvas at UCLA Extension and I worked around this weird scoring quirk by using Matching with 2 choices (Correct/Incorrect) to get the proper scoring. I used D2L Bright Space at CSULB for many years. It offered the equally weighted partial credit in addition to no partial credit and R-W that we have in Canvas for it's equivalent of the multiple answers question type. My only complaint was that equally weighted partial credit was not the default ...

Sadly, I have a bunch of image processing questions that result in binary 2D arrays as answers that I was able to use Multiple Answers to check where selected meant 1 and unselected meant 0. That obviously just flat out doesn't work using the Canvas R-W partial credit. Matching would work, but is definitely more cumbersome.

Given the lengthy time for which Canvas has not joined the other products in offering an equally likely partial credit option, perhaps the solution is to propose a new question type to offer similar functionality to multiple answers, but with equally weighted partial credit. Maybe "Multiple Selections," Multiple Checkboxes," or "Multiple T/F."