Question

Hi

I'd like to weight the assignments within an assignment group differently based on the student's scores within that group.

Within the assignment group for exams, students have four scores. I do not want to drop any of the scores.

I want their highest score to be worth 35% of the value of the assignment group, their middle two scores to each be worth 25% of the value of the assignment group, and their lowest score to be worth 15% of the value of the assignment group.

The particular exam score that is the highest, middle two, and lowest will be different for each student.

Can Canvas do something like this?

Is there any work around that can produce this result?

Thanks for the help!

jw2546@cornell.edu · Accepted Answer

@BrendaWilborn1 Can Canvas do this? Yes — it just takes a crazy workaround that is even crazier given there are three weightings you want to apply.

Let's say your exams assignment group is weighted to be 50% of the total grade for the course.

You will now need to change that to three assignment groups so that you can account for three different values that all add up to that 50% — ag1 + ag2 +ag3 = 50%.

The Low Exam assignment group should be worth 7.5% of the total grade — 15% x 50% = 7.5% = ag1.

The Middle Exams assignment group should be worth 25% of the total grade — (25% x 2) x 50% = 25% = ag2.

The High Exam assignment group should be worth  17.5% of the total grade — 35% x 50% = 17.5% = ag3.

Now that we have the proper weightings, how do we get the right exams in each group? You will need to use drop the lowest and drop the highest as well as create duplicate assignments. In one group, say ag2, you have all 4 of the exams which are the actual exams the students will take. In ag1 and ag3, you create No Submission assignments and label them things like "Low weighted Exam 1" or "High weighted Exam 1". You then manually copy grades from the original exams into the new columns. This can be done faster through a Gradebook export, copying values over, and then a Gradebook import.

Finally, you have to set the rules for the assignment groups.

For ag1, we only want the lowest of the four scores, so drop the highest 3 exams.

For ag2, we want the middle two scores, so drop the lowest 1 and highest 1 exams.

For ag3, we only want the highest of the four scores, so drop the lowest 3 exams.

You've now kept 4 exams (from the 12 total columns).

it is a pain, but it is technically possible.