There are several options in which extra credit can be offered to your students. You can create new extra credit assignments for students to complete or you can choose to use existing course assignments and add extra credit points to them when appropriate. Keep in mind that extra credit can be applied to any type of assignment within your course-quizzes, exams, written assignments, discussions, etc.

Please Note: If you are using weighted assignment groups within your course, please pay attention to how weighted groups can affect the Gradebook if assignments are worth zero points. This topic is discussed later within this help page.

Add Extra Points to an Existing Assignment

To add extra points to an assignment that already exists within your course, you may manually enter the extra points in the Gradebook. For example, if an assignment is worth 100 points, adding 5 extra points will bring the assignment total for the student to 105 points. The additional points will increase total points that are calculated in the Gradebook's final grade.

Add Extra Credit within an Assignment Rubric

Rubics can be added to your assignments to assess the quality of student assignment submissions. You may additional criterion to a rubric for extra credit purposes.

Please Note: If you have not created a rubric for your assignment and you would like to incorporate a rubric into assignments, please refer to the Add a Rubric help page for more information regarding this process.

If you have already created a rubric for an assignment, access the rubric and select the Pencil icon on the top right side of the window to edit the rubric.

Once you are editing the rubric, scroll to the bottom and select Add Criterion to add extra credit criteria to your rubric.

Add the extra credit criterion to your rubric as necessary. You must set up the rubric to be worth more than the assignment in order to give students extra points without affecting the actual assignment points.

Click the the Update Rubric button when you have completed the edits to your rubric.

When you grade student assignments using the rubric, you will be able to apply extra credit points to the assignments, if desired.

Create New Assignment with No Submission

Assignments are typically set up to require online submissions, but you can also create assignments that do not require a submission. 'No Submission' assignments typically work well for classroom activities, such as moderating a discussion, or for in-class presentations, but they can also be used for extra credit reasons.

In order to set up a 'No Submission' assignment for extra credit purposes, create a new assignment with zero points possible [1] and in the Submission Type drop-down field, choose No Submission [2] .

After students complete any extra credit work, you can manually add points for this assignment within the Gradebook.

Extra Credit and Assignment Groups

Every assignment within your course must be placed within an assignment group. Assignment groups can be unweighted or weighted, depending on how you choose to grade the student work within your course.

When assignment groups are not weighted, you can place extra credit assignments within their own assignment group, if you wish. You may want to create a separate group for extra credit assignments to help distinguish them from the other types of assignments within the course. For example, you can create an entire assignment group that has no points possible. In the example below, this entire extra credit assignment group has no points possible.

When the student completes the work required for the extra credit assignment, you can manually add points to the Gradebook.

When assignment groups are weighted, the system will not calculate grades for an assignment group that has no points possible. Therefore, for extra credit assignments to calculate correctly in weighted groups, they must be assigned to an existing assignment group that contains at least one assignment worth more than zero points. In the example below, the extra credit assignment exists within an assignment group with multiple assignments worth more than zero points. Notice how the assignment groups are weighted.

When a student completes the work required for the extra credit assignment, you can manually add points to the Gradebook. The extra credit assignment points will be automatically factored into the student grade since the assignment has been assigned to an assignment group that has at least one assignment worth more than zero points.