Limit number of assignments or quizzes

Question

Hello, I am an instructor who provides students with a list of assignments and quizzes; over the semester, they need to pick three to complete. They can choose any combination of three, but there are no do-overs. The first three assignments and/or exams they complete are the ones that count.

How do I prevent them from submitting more than three assignments and/or completing more than three quizzes? Right now I do it manually by counting everyone’s activities and removing extra grades but I would like to stop them from trying to do more assignments or quizzes once they have completed their three activities for the semester.

I tell them in the instructions and in emails but there are always some students who complete more than the required three. Is there any way to limit that number?

Thanks!

Maidie.G.3387 · Answer

Thank you! Yes I do in fact use categories and the lowest grade drop option for quizzes. However, I don't want to offer the students a "do-over" for the assignments in question, which is what would happen if I set this category to drop the lowest grade. They could for example do three activities and get, let's say, 85, 86, and 87 on them. Subsequently, they could complete a fourth activity and get a 90. The 85 would drop, thus in effect giving them a "do-over" for a higher grade.

If D2L doesn't currently offer a functionality where only the first X number of submissions count, then I would recommend it as a future enhancement.

Bonnie.R.836 · Answer

Hi @Maidie.Golan591,

One thing you can try is to groups the quizzes/assignments into Categories and have the Category set to drop the lowest grades for the number of extra assignments. So if you have 10 assignments, you could set the Category to drop the lowest 7 so only three would could towards the student's grade.  A couple of things to look out for are that it does make all the items worth the same points and would take the highest three scores regardless of the order they were submitted.

Community Documentation on Categories:

https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/3553-manage-grades-in-the-grades-tool

This won't prevent them from submitting more than three, however, it can assist you in not having to manually change the grades to remove the extra submissions.