Assignment Policies

This help document covers the Assignment Policy Sets that govern how your assignments appear and how scores are computed. For other assignment settings, see Editing Activities.

Several policy settings are available for each activity in your course. You can create custom policies to use in your course, or use one of the four built-in policy sets. You can see which policy set is active and change policy sets through the "Type" menu in the Activity Editor (reached by clicking the name of an assignment).

Warning: Do not change assignment grading policies after students have already started taking the assignment. Any completed work will be graded using the original policies, while new work will be graded using the new policies.

Built-In Policy Sets

Four built-in policy sets are available: Homework, Practice, Test, and Practice Test.

• Homework: Your assignments are likely almost all set to Homework mode. This policy set gives students feedback for their incorrect answers, and allows them to see the solution when they've finished the question. This policy set also includes a built-in calculator and periodic table, and allows students to print assignments. Students are allowed unlimited attempts at Homework assignments, and lose 5% of the available points on each question for each incorrect attempt.
• Practice: A few of your assignments are likely set to Practice mode. Practice mode is identical to Homework mode, except there is no penalty for incorrect attempts.
• Test: In Test mode, students do not receive any feedback while they take an assignment. They can move back and forth through the assignment, changing their answers as often as they like, but they do not receive any feedback or information about which questions are right or wrong until the due date passes. Students only receive credit in Test mode for their final answers, but all responses are saved, so students can see feedback for the incorrect answers they thought about giving before reaching the final answer.
• Practice Test: Practice Tests are like tests, but students can submit the assignment when they finish to receive feedback immediately about their score.

Custom Policies

You can also define a custom policy set, by choosing "Custom" in the "Type" menu. We recommend that you discuss this with your TechTA before using this option, to make sure you understand how these policies will work. Once your students have started to view an assignment, changing policies can have unexpected consequences. Some policies are not compatible with one another, so your choices may become limited as you make selections from top to bottom. If you decide to set a custom policy, you can choose from several settings:

1. Name: Give the policy set a name, so you can find it and use it again for another assignment.
2. Show Feedback: If this policy is on, students will receive feedback for incorrect answers. This policy makes the most sense combined with ~4 or more attempts, so that students have a chance to apply the feedback.
3. Guided Solution: Some questions have special Guided Solution tutorials, which walk students through the question. If this setting is on (recommended for multi-attempt assignments), students will receive a new version of the "main" question after completing a Guided Solution, allowing them to possibly receive full points if they can then answer the question without help.
4. Randomize Question Order: If this setting is on, each student will receive the assignment questions in a random order.
5. Show Periodic Table: Make an interactive periodic table available through a link at the top of the assignment.
6. Show Calculator: Make a scientific calculator available through a link at the top of the assignment.
7. Print: Allow students to print the assignment to work on it offline.
8. Show Resources (if enabled for this course): Resources are helpful information, such as relevant video lectures or textbook sections. More information about resources is coming soon.
9. Reveal Solution: This policy determines when students can see the solutions to questions:
   • Upon Completion of each Question: Reveal solutions when the student gets the correct answer or gives up on each question. This setting adds a "Give Up & View Solution" button to allow students to indicate that they wish to forfeit further attempts and see the answer to the question.
   • Upon Assignment Completion: Reveal solutions when the student indicates that they are done with the assignment. This setting adds a "Submit" button to allow students to indicate that they are done with the assignment and wish to see how they did.
   • After Due Date: Reveal solutions after the due date passes. Regardless of the setting, solutions are always available to students after the due date passes.
10. Number of Attempts: Set how many times your students can attempt to answer each question (unlimited by default in Homework and Practice modes, 1 in Test modes). Percent deductions, feedback, and guided solutions are not compatible with single-attempt assignments. We recommend allowing at least 4 attempts.
11. Percent Deduction per Attempt: Set what percentage of their total score for that question a student will lose for each attempt (5% by default in Homework mode). Set this to "None" for practice assignments.
12. Attempt Deduction for Multiple Choice: Apply special grading rules for multiple choice questions (for example, if a multiple choice has 4 choices, deduct 33% of the available points per attempt). In most cases, we do not recommend this setting.