Faculty have long had the ability to grant extra credit for student work in the CoursePlus Gradebook. Faculty could even set entire Gradebook categories as being for extra credit. One area where faculty haven't been able to easily add in extra credit options was the Quiz Generator — until now. Being able to offer extra credit questions allows for greater flexibility in how you evaluate and reward your students' work.
You can now mark individual questions in a quiz as being extra credit questions. When a question is marked as being an extra credit question, students who answer the question correctly receive the point value for that question, even if it takes them over the maximum normal points for that quiz. Students who do not answer an extra credit question or who do not answer an extra credit question correctly are not penalized, nor do they receive any benefit. If an extra credit question allows for partial credit (e.g., combo questions, match-from-two list questions, multiple choice questions with multiple correct answers), students can receive partial extra credit if they do not answer all components of the extra credit question correctly.
When scores for a quiz with extra credit questions are transferred to the course Gradebook, the student score comes across exactly as it is in the Quiz Generator, even if the value is beyond the maximum normal points for that quiz. Any points (or percentage) that goes above the maximum normal points (or 100%) for that quiz is added as a bonus to the calculation of the student's final grade in the course.
Here are some more important points (pun intended) about extra credit questions:
- You can mark any question in a quiz as being extra credit.
- You can have multiple extra credit questions in a quiz.
- You can change a question into an extra credit after students complete a quiz. You'll need to recalculate student grades to see the change.
- If you mark an extra credit question as "Excluded from Scoring," it will not count as extra credit toward a student grade on a quiz.
- While every question in a question block can be an extra credit question, you cannot mark a question block as being for extra credit.
- You can have extra credit tag-rules in tag-rule quizzes. All questions that match the rule must be extra credit questions.
- If a quiz has extra credit questions, and that quiz is part of a category in the Gradebook, the extra credit points a student receives only apply to the category in which the quiz appears. The extra credit points do not get added in at the end to the overall grade.
How to Mark Questions as Extra Credit
- Click Quiz Generator under Activities and Assignments on the main Faculty Tools page.
- Click the Question Bank tab at the top of the page.
- Find the question you want to change and click Edit.
- Click Yes next to Is this an extra credit question?
- Click Edit Question at the bottom of the page to save the change.