Buzz: Product Feedback

Hello Heath. You can edit an activity to have it "treat unscored (submissions) as zero." This zero will not remove the activity from the To-do List and will allow the student to still complete it, as long as the activity settings allow.

Yes, I've seen that but I'm not sure it will have the same impact.  If that is marked, how is a student's score affected?  For instance, if they've never taken the assignment because it simply isn't due yet, is their grade negatively impacted? 

Hey Heath:

If you check "Treat unscored as zero," it will negatively impact the student's score, but will not remove it from the To-do List. Isn't that what you said you wanted? 

Apologies.  Because we have a virtual class, we have an entire course content in for a semester.  Now, while we encourage kids to work at their own pace, we still need kids to realize when they are super far behind BEFORE the end of the semester (so, we need to prevent a kid from having a 90 and thinking he's doing good when, in fact, he has 60 overdue assignments). 

That is when we need to be able to have a zero that STAYS on the To-Do List (in my experience, the kids rarely know, even when told, to look at the Course Tree...if it drops off the To Do List, it's virtually gone).  If we do the treat unsubmitted as zeroes, then that doesn't help our problem, because now we have the reverse: EVERYONE thinks they are doing poorly, for most of the semester, because stuff they aren't supposed to do until three months down the line is counting as a zero.

Does that make sense?  Sorry for the miscommunication.

Heath,

Are you looking for an option to "treat unscored as zero" but only after the due date? This is something I would like to see.

I typically go back after due date and select treat unscored as 0. This allows the student to still turn the assignment in and keep it in the to:do list. 

Would it also work for you to set "suggested" due dates, then in the to:do list it will show that the item is past due? A 0 would  not negatively impact the grade, but it will indicate to students to keep on track.

Kevin,

That actually sounds like exactly what we need to do!  It would be nice to have a button for this at the top level of the gradebook so I wouldn't have to go into the Curriculum Map to mark "Treat Unscored", but that's just a wish!  Thank you, I think this will work.

Great! To sum up the feature request:

Additional Options for "Treat Unscored as Zero"

Currently, the treat unscored as zero option is placed in the assignment settings, which is generally set when initially creating or assigning the activity. There are 2 features that could make an easier workflow.

1. Include a "treat unscored as zero after due date" option. This would give the student a black zero in the gradebook when the assignment is past due. This will also still leave the assignment in the student's to do list. This could appear as an additional checkbox option under "treat unscored as zero" or a checkbox option that appears when "treat unscored as zero" is checked.

2. Allow an option at the top level of the gradebook to treat unscored as zero, so that the teacher does not need to go into the curriculum map or "edit activity". This may, however, work better as an option for batch update to fill with black zeros. 

While it is the same number of clicks to do a batch update as it is to go into the activity settings, batch update seems like a natural place for this for the purpose of filling scores.

Here is another reason to allow black zeros to be entered through batch update, rather than the activity editor. When copying assignments within the course, the "treat unscored as zero" setting is copied as well.

If users are in essence treating this feature as a black zero fill button, we would not always want this to be an assignment setting.

Here's another option, but it might not be feasible.

I think it would be great to add a footer to the Gradebook in Performance that said something like automatic zeros and then allow a check to be put in the box there per assignment.  If the check is there, then the zero populates in the gradebook.  If you take it off, it goes away.

1. Reference the allow late submissions check-box in the assignment settings.  Any assignment that has a zero and allows late submissions would show up on the T0-Do list.  Assignments that don't allow the late submission would be removed.

One other note I wanted to add,

Changing the setting on the assignment will not be reflected in the gradebook until either the student submits something, a teacher manually enters a grade, or the next day comes around.

With the new updates this has become even more cumbersome.  I would really like to see an option for treating scores as zero by due date and not having to manually check the button as due dates pass.

It would be similar to the course setting "Automatically assign zero scores to past-due activities", but would not remove the item from their to-do list. 

Could we add the "Mark incomplete as zero" setting to the bulk editor in the activity list?

100% agree with Ryan's request for adding the Mark incomplete as zero setting to the bulk editor in the activity list.  We're hitting that issue quite a bit right now trying to clean up the copies and that change is still very cumbersome.  Thanks for considering it.

Thank you all for your feedback. These requests have been passed along to our Product Team for further consideration.

Have any changes been made to this issue since the last post in 2016?  It would be a nice fix for us if, when the "automatically assign zeros to past due activities" setting is checked, that it kept the past due assignments on their To Do list (black zero as opposed to red).  Are there any plans to adjust this?  

We stopped using the setting and allow the course set automatically assign zeros to past due assignments.  It no longer restricts students from completing the work and continues to appear on the to-do list.  Save some time and stop changing that setting each week and switch to the course setting instead. 

Good to know. Do you know if those zeros are counted as "submitted" zeros on the student submission history?  Or does it keep the submission history reading as blank? 

Submission history is left blank. It only shows a score update in the Activity History by the administrator.

any updates on this, Accelerate?