UsingWW: What is the behavior of grading when weights are changed?

WeBWorK Main Forum

What is the behavior of grading when weights are changed?

This forum has a limit to the number of forum postings you can make in a given time period - this is currently set at 10 posting(s) in 1 day

Hi,

I just want to know if anyone has tried to change the weight of a problem in a problem set after the problem set has closed. I want to change one, but am concerned that it will be disastrous in some way, such as corrupting the student scores for that problem set.

Thanks for insight on this before I venture into the unknown on my own.

Murphy

Re: What is the behavior of grading when weights are changed?

by Danny Glin - Wednesday, 17 September 2014, 4:42 PM

I've done this before. I just tried it again, and it didn't cause any issues.

The student's status on a question is stored in the database as a value between 0 and 1. The student's score (status*weight) is calculated on the fly when it is needed (e.g. in the Student Progress and Scoring Tools screens), so changing the weight does not affect the data recording how much of the question the student got correct.

If you're quite paranoid, you can take a backup of the entire course from the Course Administration page, which would give you something to go back to if things go wrong.

Danny