MOUNT ROYAL ACADEMIC DEVELOPMENT CENTRE
How Blackboard Calculates Partial
Credit Multiple Answer Questions
In a Blackboard test multiple answer question there is an option to allow partial credit. The formula
used is complex. This tutorial will show you how to allow partial credit, and explain how the score is
calculated. To go through all the steps in creating a test, see the How To Make a Quiz in Blackboard
tutorial.
1
1
1. When creating
questions in a test, click
Multiple Answer.
2. In the 2 Options
section, check Allow
Partial Credit.
2
http://www.mtroyal.ca/adc
In these examples, 1’s are the correct answers and 0’s are incorrect. A student earns points based on
how many of the right answers they choose minus the number of wrong answers they choose. The
lowest grade they can achieve is 0 (not a negative grade)
3. In this first example there was only 1 right answer.
The student chose the correct one and one incorrect
one. The point against them for choosing an incorrect
answer takes away the point they earned by choosing a correct one, totalling 0.
4. In this example there were 2 right answers. The
student chose both correct ones and one incorrect
one. The incorrect choice cancelled out 1 of the 2
correct marks, leaving one mark.
Since there were 2 correct answers, each mark was
worth 50% of the total which in all these cases is 1.
So the total for this question is 0.5.
5. In this example there were 3 right answers. The
student chose 2 of the 3 correct ones and one incorrect one. The incorrect choice cancelled out 1 of the
3 correct marks, leaving one mark.
Since there were 3 correct answers, each mark was
worth 33% of the total which in all these cases is 1.
So the total for this question is 0.33.
http://www.mtroyal.ca/adc