Buzz: Questions & Answers

Unless you somehow have a local setting that blocks you from changing the gradebook you should be able to change any grade you want. I've always just been able to click on any grade to change it.

This is what I see when I click on a grade (with quick edit disabled):

We are able to change grades. But, we are not able to delete a 0% score.

We have a few students that earned a 0% on a quiz, and we would like to delete the score before they resubmit (since the 0% is affecting their overall grade). But, there does not seem to be a way to delete scores.

What does the clear option do?

I guess the part of that I was missing is that you are referring to scores the students earned doing online questions in Buzz. Not scores you physically entered.

As far as I know, there is no way to remove those scores. You could excuse them, but then you would have to un-excuse it when the student was ready to try again. The issue with excusing grades is that the default student preference is to hide excused assignments. As soon as you excuse something it disappears from the student's gradebook like it never existed. At that point it's out of sight, out of mind for the student.

Hello Burt,

The "Clear" option will allow for clearing the current score, which will place the item in a "Needs Grading" state which will also cause the item to not be included in the overall grade until a score is set again. Previous scores cannot be deleted and they will be retained in the history, but clearing the score will allow for the item to not affect the overall grade until a new score is submitted.

Scott, that isn't the behavior I've seen from the "clear" score option. I switched to the student app and completed an online assignment. After checking both my overall score and the score on that assignment I went back to the teacher app. In the teacher app I tried to clear the score. Nothing changed. I double-checked both the grade on that assignment and the overall score and they neither had changed. I've only been able to clear scores for offline (paper) assignments for which I physically typed a student's score.

Ah you are correct here, my apologies. I realized I was verifying with the wrong item on this side. For the automatically graded items it is correct that clear will not revoke the score, and for a student to receive a higher score they will need to either retake the assessment or a teacher will need to manually grade the item.

This is a feature that needs attention. It would be great if the "clear" button worked to clear out the score, all the while keeping the version and activity history updated. We often have students redo work as a means for remediation - and not being able to clear out a score has caused some frustration.

Should I submit a request to get the clear feature to work on auto-graded items?

Hello Burt and Elizabeth,

Thank you both for the feedback regarding this behavior. We have noted the suggestion and will discuss options for possible future enhancements.

Does the fact that the auto-graded score exists essentially prevent the teacher from allowing the student to retry the assessment?  I am seeing an example of this and, with the retry set, the student only sees the previously submitted answers when they attempt to retry the assessment and there seems to be no way for them to actually re-enter their answers.

Hey Jeff,

There are a few factors here which may need to be investigated further. It should be noted though that a retry will not override the assessment attempt limit nor will it allow a student to attempt the assessment after the due date grace period. If neither of these limits are applicable to the example you're seeing please route it through your authorized support contact for further investigation.

Scott, Thanks for the advice.  The number of attempts for this assessment is set to 1.  Based on what you said about re-try not overriding the attempt limit, I am guessing this may be the next thing for the teacher to try.

However, I'm confused as to what value the Clear Score and Allow Re-try features provide if they do not allow a specific Student to re-take an assessment unless the assessment settings are modified for all students to increase the number of attempts.  Can you point me in the direction that helps resolve this confusion?

Thanks,

Jeff

Hello Jeff,

The Clear Score option is to allow for the removal of a manually assigned score. Allow Retry is primarily for activities that do not allow for multiple attempts in the settings, like dropbox activities. One suggestion for allowing an additional attempt for an assessment above the regular limit would be to create a group specifically for students that need to take the item again and update the assessment to increase the attempt limit for that group.

We are wondering if there has been any updates to this issue and also have a question about how percent complete fits in with this. Occasionally students will submit blank assignments to get items off the To Do list.  We know we can assign a retry and the item will appear back on the student's To Do list but we would also like the option to adjust the Percent Complete bar for these students to truly reflect was has been completed.

I added a screenshot for a test student where there is a passing score, but approx. 15% of the assignments were turned in blank. It would be great if there was a feature (enhanced clear score?) where teachers could mark that a score should not count towards completion.

Annette Walaszek,

The behavior hasn't been changed. 

You could add more control over the resulting behavior due to students submitting blank documents in assignments by changing the completion trigger in the activity settings from when a student submits the activity to passing score. That way it will not mark the activity complete until a teacher provides a passing grade. Under that scenario if a student submits a blank document the teacher can flunk it and issue a retry if they desire. 

Thank you for that suggestion! I also see that teachers can override the non-completion on a "legit" low score using the Override Complete choice on the grading screen.

As a followup suggestion, it would be fantastic if changing the completion trigger was a bulk edit option for the Assignment category.

I would also like to put in a vote for a more case-by-case functionality. For instance, if the Override Complete would allow the teacher to toggle that completion off as well as on, that would help greatly as teachers would not need to make multiple assignment setting updates.

Thank you!

The purpose of the override complete button in the grade editor is intended for activities that are gated (requires mastery). Selecting the button in the grade editor allows the student to continue in the course if they did not achieve a passing score. Otherwise a student would not be able to progress to the next activity until they achieve a passing grade. That feature is different from the completion trigger in the activity settings that I recommended. 

Thanks, Brian, for clarification on the intended purpose of the Override Complete. Makes sense, and appreciate the help and suggestion on the blank submission issue!