Options for Calculating Grades for Fall 2023 in WebCampus

As communicated by university leadership, traditional final exams for Fall 2023 have been replaced with two new options:

• Students will end the semester with the grade they have earned based on work completed before Dec. 6.
• Some faculty may opt to offer an optional online final exam or take-home project before Dec. 18, allowing students an opportunity to improve their grade. If an instructor offers an optional online exam or project, students who do not opt in would earn their grade based on work completed before Dec. 6, without any penalty for not opting in to the online exam or project.

Instructors calculating grades with WebCampus will need to update assignments and/or quizzes depending on how they wish to complete grades for their course.

Excluding Assignments and/or Final Exam

If you need to exclude assignments from your grade calculations (such as an assignment after December 6), you can update the settings for these graded items so they are removed from the calculation.

• If the assignment or quiz was never published, no action is required as students will not be able to see the item or make a submission. This item will not be a part of the grade calculation.
• If the assignment or quiz was published, and there are no student submissions, we recommend unpublishing the item so that students will not be able to see the item or make a submission. This will also remove the item from the gradebook.
  • How do I publish or unpublish an assignment as an instructor?
  • How do I publish or unpublish a quiz as an instructor?
• If the assignment or quiz was published, and there are student submissions, you will need to update the settings of the item to exclude it from the grade calculation.
  • For assignments:
    • You can exclude that assignment from the final grade calculation
  • For quizzes:
    • You can change the quiz type to a Practice Quiz​​​​​​​ so it is ungraded
  • For all items:
    • To prevent students from receiving notifications and/or triggering "Late" flags in the gradebook, update the Available Until date to a date in the past and remove the Due Date

Offering an Optional Final Exam or Project

If you have students who would like to complete an online final exam or project to improve their course grade, there are two option to accommodate this in WebCampus.

Excusing the Student From the Exam or Project

Instructors can change the status of a student submission to Excused. Excused assignments or exams are not calculated as part of the student's total grade. If set as excused, the assignment page and the student's grade page will show that the student has been excused from the assignment and they will not be able to submit anything for the assignment or exam. WebCampus Support recommends excusing students who do not complete the item so that gradebook rules to not accidentally calculate the assignment into the student's final grade.

1. Click on Grades in your course menu.
2. Click on the cell in the grade column for the student you would like to excuse. 
3. Type in EX
4. Hit Enter or Return on your keyboard.

Excused will appear in the student's grade column.

Alternative Option: Assigning the Final Exam or Project Only to Students Who Opted In

You can assign the Final Exam or Project just to students who opted in to complete the final exam or project. You will need to know who has opted in to this option for this feature. Anyone not added to the Assign to box for the exam/assignment will be exempt from receiving a grade and it will not count towards their total score for the course. The student who has not been assigned to the item will also not be able to see the exam or assignment in your course or their WebCampus To Do list.

1. Open the settings for an Assignment or Quiz in your course
2. In the Assign to box at the bottom of the exam settings, select X to remove the current assignments
3. Type in the student's name in the assign to box and select them from the list. (You can add several students by repeating this step).
   
    
4. Update the availability and due dates as necessary.
5. Select Save at the bottom.

When you view the Gradebook, the student's gradebook cell for the exam/project will be grayed out if they are not in the Assign to box. If a student later needs to be excused from the item, you can use the instructions above to excuse them without unassigning them.

Need Additional Help?

The Canvas Instructor Guides contain additional articles for all available course settings. For additional assistance, please visit the WebCampus Knowledge Base for additional articles or our Services area to submit a support ticket. You can also contact the IT Help Desk.