Penalize Multiple Submissions

You can penalize multiple submissions to encourage your students to focus on completing the problem correctly the first time and discourage hasty "off-the cuff" responses.

Best Practice This kind of penalty is best used for free-response questions like chemPad, mathPad, or NumberLine.

For multiple-choice questions, appropriately limiting the number of submissions or penalizing incorrect responses is more effective.

  1. Open the Conditional Points window. 
    From hereDo this

    From assignment settings (Assignment Editor, Assignment Templates Manager)

    Under Automatic Point Adjustments > Bonus or Penalty, click add or edit.

    From a single question (Assignment Editor)

    In the Bonus or Penalty column, click add or edit.
  2. Under Select a Condition, select Deduct credit based on the number of submissions.
  3. Enter the penalty that should be applied with each additional submission and the number of submissions that are allowed before a penalty is applied.
    For example, if you specify a penalty of 25% for each submission used beyond 2, your students will receive full credit for the first 2 submissions, 75% for the third submission, 50% for the fourth submission, and so on.
  4. If you do not want your students ever to receive a negative number of points, ensure that Lowest score possible is 0 is selected.
  5. If available, click Calculate Points Breakdown. This feature is not available when editing conditional points for assignment settings.
    Conditional points window

    Review the displayed deductions for each number of submissions. If needed, change the penalty or number of submissions and click Calculate Points Breakdown again.

  6. When the conditional points settings are correct, update the assignment.
    To update thisDo this

    A single question

    Click Update Question.

    All questions currently on the assignment

    Click Update All Questions.

    Assignment settings

    In the Assignment Editor, click Update.

The Conditional Points window closes and your assignment is updated.

The automatic bonus or penalty is applied immediately when your students submit answers that meet the specified conditions.

Remember to save your changes in the Assignment Editor.