Can you please add the feature to homework (maybe assessments already do this?) to have an option to force submit homework activities? Maybe a button in the gradebook or batch update that says "submit all" or an option under due date that says "submit when due" would work.
Every teacher I've spoken with at my school fights the same battle with the students forgetting to submit their answers for final grading. A student may have correctly completed 18 out of 20 questions on the activity, but because they didn't do the last 2, they never submitted it. Now the student has a zero instead of 18. If it were a paper assignment that I collected on the due date, they would have the 18.
I thought this had been requested already, but a search didn't turn up any relevant results in the discussion boards.
Comments (8)
Instead of a forced submit, it would be great if Buzz just took the grade as a work in progress: when the student submits 1 question, it makes the score 1/20 (but still shows the paper sheet in the gradebook), when the student submits 5 questions, it gives them 5/20, etc.
That would be great too. :)
Homework is designed to work like this, each question is tied to its own submission, allowing for partial work to be submitted and graded. That item type may be more what is being requested. The homework questions will need to be submitted still by the student as a submission is required to be graded.
What you explain isn't necessarily what is happening though, unless I misunderstand your explanation.
Let's say there is a homework activity with 10 questions. A student types an answer for #1 and submits it for grading. Assume they get that correct. They do not have a score of 1/10. The student has no score at all, just the paper icon which from a grade standpoint acts as an excused score. Maybe this same student is a slacker and never attempts the other 9 questions. The assignment doesn't exist for that student so they never see the impact of 1 out of 10 points on their grade. I can batch update to give all unsubmitted scores a zero. Now, though the student isn't receiving credit for the one question they correctly completed. Wanting my students to master the course content, I tell this student to go back and complete the assignment. They open the assignment and correctly answer question #2. As soon as they opened question #2, Buzz removed the zero that I assigned to unsubmitted work. Their zero score has gone back to a paper icon (which is like an excused). Their grade improved by the loss of the zero, but they still have no score for this homework assignment.
Potentially, a student could never submit a homework and would never be penalized unless I repeatedly went into the gradebook and changed all of the unsubmitted scores to zeros. Which is several times for each assignment times my 170 students.
It would be so much better with the live updating that Flew suggested. When they submit #1 correctly (out of 10), the gradebook shows 10%. When they submit another correct answer, the gradebook shows 20%, etc. If the due date arrives and they only did 8 questions, they would have 80% in the gradebook instead of an incomplete - soon to turn into a batch updated zero.
Essentially, there is a loophole in the gradebook that students are taking advantage of that we would like for you to close/eliminate.
Thank you for the additional clarification.
Now that we are at the end of our semester, this is really showing up. If a student has a 0 for a homework assignment (now called practice questions), all they have to do is go in to the assignment, submit 1 question, and it removes the assignment from their grade. This is really frustrating.
I think it was a step backward for Buzz to turn the homework assignments into practice questions and not count the incomplete questions into the grade at all.
I realize that this is against much of what education is pushing for today, but there are plenty of good reasons to consider a traditional approach to homework. For one, our homework questions demonstrate whether a student has mastered a standard or not. If they answer the question wrong or they leave the question blank, either way, it shows that the student hasn't mastered the material. Second, it has been said that if I wanted the questions to count, then I should make it an assessment instead. This doesn't work though because they see all the questions at once before submitting. If I give them 10 math problems that are multiple answers each. The assessment doesn't work well, because they have to answer all 10 of the questions before they can find out if any of them were correct. And, if they want to fix the one or two questions they answered incorrectly, then they must complete all ten math problems again! However, if I use the practice questions (homework), then they can work the questions one at a time, increasing their confidence and knowledge as they progress through the questions and clearly (or unclearly, if leaving a question blank) demonstrating their knowledge (or lack their of) of the standards.
The option to choose between unsubmitted practice questions being counted as zero or not counted at all should be left up to the teacher... maybe in the course settings? At the very least, the practice question assignments should have completed questions counting automatically toward the grade and the Batch Update having the option to automatically submit unsubmitted questions.
Please consider this in one of Buzz's future updates.
Have you given any thought (is this request still on your list) to this feature request? (Flew worded it better in the second post.)
To clarify, it would be HUGE if Buzz would update students' scores as they submit each question in a practice (homework) type activity instead of waiting until they have submitted every question.
Every teacher who uses practice (homework) activities at my school has an issue with this. What happens is a student completes part of an activity (say 7 out of 10 questions), but hey don't complete the last 3. Because it doesn't calculate a score until every question was submitted, Buzz leaves the score blank in the gradebook. Since there is no score it's like the assignment never existed for that student. After the due date the teachers assign zeros for unsubmitted activities. Now the grade is 0 even though the student should have 7/10.
If Buzz would give the student points as they submit each individual question, this wouldn't be a problem.
Five years after the original post and this is still one of the biggest complaints from teachers, students, and parents. If a student has correct answers in an assignment, why can't they see those points in the gradebook? As Flew stated back in 2016, practice (homework) assignments need to show scores in progress as students work through assignments.
Besides helping students' grades it would help me as a teacher see at a glance whether a student opened an assignment without answering any questions, completed a few questions, completed most of the questions... Now, I have to open each incomplete assignment to see how much they have completed.