Count only best score of 3 quizzes

Ines.B.100

I would like students to have the option to take 1, 2, or 3 different quizzes on a particular topic where only the top score is counted in the grade book. If I drop the lowest 2 in a category, that doesn't work because then they have to take all 3 to get any score at all. I'd like only the highest score of the 3 different quizzes to be counted. That means some students may take 3 quizzes and some may take only 1 and all will have a grade display in that category.

Isaac.M.201

Hello @iib@uvm.edu ,

I have a few different ideas that come to mind to help you achieve this behaviour in your gradebook!

What is most likely the most straightforward option would be to change the Calculation Options of your gradebook to "Treat ungraded items as 0". This option can be found under the "Settings" of your gradebook.
This would ensure that dropping the lowest 2 items in a category will consider the quizzes where students do not have a grade as having a value of 0.

• Please note that this would impact how "ungraded" items are treated across your entire Gradebook.

Alternatively, we can achieve the same result by manually assigning a grade of 0 to all students for the relevant Grade Items that are under this Category. This can be done in Bulk from the "Enter Grades" view of the gradebook either by using the Spreadsheet view, or selecting the dropdown of a grade item and clicking on "Enter Grades" as seen in this article.

• This has the benefit of not changing the way ungraded items are treated across your gradebook, but it does require a few more clicks for you to provide those initial grades of "0" to these grade items.
• If the scores of your quizzes are automatically published, once a student completes their Quiz attempt it will overwrite the initial score of 0 with the score they achieved.

It is also possible to create a Formula Grade Item that could display the highest scores that students achieved across several Grade Items, but for the purpose of contributing only the highest grade achieved towards the final grade of a course, I would recommend one of the other two options above which make use of the "drop the lowest grade" within a Grade Category.

I hope this answered your original question well!