Quiz score is a whole number, student scores end up with decimal places in the grade book
An Instructor recently held a series of quizzes as part of a final exam. The quiz was imported from a Blackboard course package along with all other course content.
One of the original quizzes had one extra question for zero (0) points to solicit student feedback in a short answer question at the end of the quiz for a score of 50 points in a quiz of 51 questions. In Brightspace, this resulted in a quiz with a score of 51 points rather than 50 points for the same quiz. The Instructor opted to remove the feedback question prior to releasing the quiz to students as Brightspace does not permit a score of zero for a quiz question, restoring the total score back to 50 points.
In this configuration, students should receive a grade in whole numbers out of a score of 50 (ex: 38/50). The quiz was comprised entirely of multiple-choice questions with a score of 1 point each. What has been observed is scores containing decimal places, where a student who should have received a grade of 38/50, instead received a grade of 37.42/50 (or something like that) in the grade book.
The Instructor has since manually corrected the grades as displayed in the grade book but I could not find any option when editing the quiz or in the grade book to explain or correct this discrepancy.
There must be some nuance I'm missing so I look forward to benefiting form your experience on this topic.
Thank you for your time!
Answers
-
Hi Alex,
In regards to your question about decimals points appearing in the final score, I am not clear if the extra question was removed by the instructor before or after students had started answering the quiz. If it was after, that could impact how grades appear in the gradebook for some students.
Alternately, if the instructor applied custom weights to any question (e.g. made one answer in a Multiple Choice question worth 100% and another, partially correct answer worth 25% - see screenshot), that could also result in a student getting partial credit for a response.
Finally, I'd like to plug the Product Idea Exchange (3rd Party Tool). If you haven't already explored this area, you can search for and upvote ideas (like allowing for 0 point quiz questions) here. In the meantime, the instructor can use the Surveys tool or a Discussion forum to solicit anonymous student feedback.
