Awarding Partial Credit for a Problem#

Tags: educator reference

You can configure the following problem types so that learners can receive partial credit for a problem if they submit a partially correct answer.

By awarding partial credit for problems, you can motivate learners who have mastered some of the course content and provided a score that accurately demonstrates their progress.

For more information about configuring partial credit, see the topic for each problem type.

How Learners Receive Partial Credit#

Learners receive partial credit when they submit an answer in the LMS.

In the following example, the course team configured a single select problem to award 25% of the possible points (instead of 0) for one of the incorrect answer options. The learner selected this incorrect option and received 25% of the possible points.

A single select problem with partial credit for an incorrect answer.

Partial Credit and Reporting on Learner Performance#

When a learner receives partial credit for a problem, the LMS only adds the points earned to the grade. However, the LMS reports any problem for which a learner receives credit, in full or in part, as correct in the following ways.

  • Events that the system generates when learners receive partial credit for a problem indicate that the answer was correct. Specifically, the correctness field has a value of correct.

    For more information about events, see Problem Interaction Events in the EdX Research Guide.

  • The AnswerValue in the Student Answer Distribution report is 1, for correct.

Course teams can see that a learner received partial credit for a problem in the learner’s submission history. The submission history shows the score that the learner received out of the total available score and the value in the correctness field is partially-correct. For more information, see Learner Answer Submissions.