Percent Penalties for Extensions

Instructors have asked for the ability to give percent-based penalties when they give extensions. We recently added this ability and included two ways to use the percent penalty. The points method of penalizing extensions is also still available.

The new default method is to give a penalty based on the unearned, or additional, points gained in the submission after the extension is granted. Alternatively, you can give a penalty on a percentage of the total points the assignment is worth.

The settings pictured below would impose a 5% penalty on all unearned points.

You can also set a policy of a 5% penalty for the unearned points as shown here.

If you allow any of the three types of penalties with automatic extensions, students will see an extension request window, such as the following, which tells them clearly what the penalty is and how it will be applied. They must then accept the extension before it is effective and the penalty is applied.

Let's look at two examples — a 10%-of-total penalty and a 25%-of-unearned penalty.

Suppose Dave has already tried the assignment, which is worth 20 points, and he has a score of 14/20. He requests an extension.

An extension with a 10%-of-total penalty would cost Dave two points, so his score would immediately drop to 12/20. Subsequent work would receive full credit, assuming he does well on the currently incorrect questions, and his overall score would be higher. The most Dave could earn would be 18/20.

If the extension, instead, came with a 25%-of-unearned penalty, Dave's current score would be unaffected. No points could be removed from the 14/20 he has already earned, regardless of his subsequent work. The six remaining available points are discounted by 25%. So if Dave earns four of the remaining six points, he would actually receive three points (75% of the four he would have earned). His total for the assignment would be 17/20. The maximum points a student could earn depends on how many they had before they requested the extension — in Dave's case 18.5 points (6*75% + 14).

We hope you find this new feature useful. As always, let us know if you have other comments or suggestions!

The WebAssign Team