Partial Credit (Assessments)
Depending on the question type, there are a few ways to allocate partial credit for assessments. This article provides an overview of these options and some examples.
For type-specific partial credit information, see the following articles:
- Multiple Choice
- Matching
- Ordering
- Fill in the Blank Text
- Fill in the Blank Dropdown
- Fill in the Blank Drag and Drop
- Label Image
- Highlight Hotspot
- Highlight Text
- Number Line
Alternate Answer Setup
Click the +button at the top of the Correct Answer Setup area to enable an additional permutation of choices that are at least partially correct. The example below uses the Multiple Choice question type.
Click into the percentage field to the right of the additional answer to determine whether the alternate answer is worth partial credit and to set the percentage of possible points students can receive for this answer accordingly.
An example of an alternate answer setup for a Multiple Choice question.
You can set up multiple Correct Answer tabs in various configurations, each with a different percentage. For example, if your question allows multiple responses, and A & D are correct, you can create a new tab in which selecting A & C gives 50% credit. There are scenarios when you might not want students who choose A & C to earn any points, or maybe they might only earn 25% credit.
Partial Match
Select Partial Match to award points relative to the number of choices the student selected correctly, without individually setting each possible permutation as an Alternate Answer.
Penalty Score
When the question is set to Partial Match, you can optionally set a Penalty Score to deduct a percentage of the total question point value for each incorrectly matched answer. The following example uses the Matching question type.
For example, if the following is the Correct Answer, Partial Match has been selected, and the Penalty Score has not been changed from 0:
An example of a Correct Answer Setup for a sample Matching question.
The following response will earn points for correct matches and not be further penalized for incorrect matches:
Automatic scoring for a Matching question with Partial Match scoring enabled.
If the Penalty Score has been set to 100, the same response would be penalized for incorrect matches, effectively canceling out the points earned for correct matches:
Automatic scoring for a Matching question with Partial Match scoring enabled and Penalty Score set to 100.
If the Penalty Score has been set to something between 0 and 100, the response would be penalized for incorrect matches. However, incorrect matches would be weighted less than correct answers. For example, if the Penalty Score were 50:
Automatic scoring for a Matching question with Partial Match scoring enabled and Penalty Score set to 50.
Partial Pairwise Per Response
Check Partial Pairwise Per Response to determine the score by comparing the options in pairs. If the Scoring Type is set to Partial Pairwise Per Response, an established algorithm will evaluate all possible responses and award points to each possible response based on how closely it resembles the Correct Answer. This calculation is based on each option's position relative to the other options.
For example, if the following is the Correct Answer and Partial Pairwise Per Response has been selected:
An example of a correct answer setup for an Ordering question.
The following incorrect response will be awarded 0 points, because none of the options are in their correct relative positions:
However, if some of the options are in the correct position relative to each other, even if the options are not in the correct slots, the response will be awarded partial credit:
Responses with some options in their correct slots will be weighed more favorably:
