## WeBWorK Problems

### Grading of essay questions when other questions are present

by Alex Jordan -
Number of replies: 2
I'm observing an undesired behavior with PGessaymacros.pl.

I have a question that has three answer blanks. The first two are expecting MathObject lists. The last one is an assay answer asking for observations about the earlier two answers.

The due date for the set has not yet passed, but I went in to the set, to this problem, to start leaving some early feedback that might give some students a chance to revise their observations. There are three types of students:

A. Have not answered at all
B. Have answered all three parts, and got the list questions wrong.
C. Have answered all three parts, and got the list questions right.

The dropdown menu that allows me to choose a grade based on the essay response is where the undesired behavior is. For students in A or B, it starts at 0, which I would expect. But for students in C, the dropdown menu is starting at 100. Even though I can see their actual grade is 66.6% So if I were to save progress, I'd be giving them 100% even if I haven't read their answer yet. And if I want to give them 0 for their essay, I have no option to leave their score at 66.6%. (I'm going up to 70%.)

I suspect that because the dropdown menu has options in multiples of 5%, that then when a student has 66.6%, the array that the dropdown menu pulls from is defaulting to 100% when it can't find something like "66.6%".

So is this a bug with PGessaymacros.pl?
In reply to Alex Jordan

### Re: Grading of essay questions when other questions are present

by Paul Pearson -
Hi Alex,

When I write multiple part problems with essays, I usually use the all-or-nothing grader (std_problem_grader, see code below) instead of the default average grader.  Geoff will probably have to answer the question about whether what you observed is a bug.

Best regards,

Paul Pearson

install_problem_grader(~~&std_problem_grader);
In reply to Paul Pearson

### Re: Grading of essay questions when other questions are present

by Geoff Goehle -
Its half a bug.  I do need to add some code to make sure that the grade closest to the students current grade is selected.  However, if you want to still assign students a 66% you will need to set the variable