Student entered extra credit

Question

To encourage students to read the syllabus, I "hide" extra credit points in it. In my smaller classes I just have students notify me when they find the extra credit statement and then I add points to an extra credit column in canvas. However, I have another class where I would like to implement this technique, but because my class is 180 students, I don't want to receive dozens of emails notifying me that they found the extra credit. I'm wondering if there is a way to create an assignment in canvas where students would enter the extra credit if they find it? That would eliminate the need for me to be involved.

Greg · Accepted Answer

Here's what I would do, @sfreng: create a New Quiz using the powerful fill-in-the-blank questions. One of its options is to use regular expressions, which will allow you to dictate exactly what students must type in order to get the points. The Canvas Guides has a document on this:

How do I create a Fill in the Blank question in New Quizzes

Of course the act of creating a quiz brings attention to the opportunity to earn extra credit, and the number of questions (or number of possible answers within a question) would also let students know how vigilant they need to be.

I'm going to mark my response as a solution, but there can be more than one. I hope our colleagues here in the Community can share other options for this.

ShaneDeHorney · Accepted Answer

The creation of a QUIZ should work nicely to manage 'student-awarded' extra credit.

Consider setting the quiz up to only show one question at a time and lock questions after answering to improve the integrity of the extra credit.

This quiz could be setup with only one question or you could set it up using 3 questions:

You might first present an honesty statement and ask if they found the extra credit points statement - answer choices can include "Yes, I found the extra credit points." (with yes being the correct answer).

The second question might be 'where' they found it - using multiple choice.

Third question might ask what points were found (if there are multiple points to find) - using short answer or multiple choice.

All three of those questions will auto-graded by Canvas, unless set up as short answers. Either way, the gradebook would keep track for you and you could do the final awarding of points at your discretion in the future or at a certain time after the quiz closes (using available dates).

Also, setting the quiz question(s) up to reflect the number of extra credits points earned will save time in the future - maybe so many points per question -or- only points for the third question and 0 points for the first 2 questions - or any number of possibilities.

I'd love to know what you decide to do.