Awarding Partial Credit for a Problem#

Tags: educator reference

Warning

Partial credit is only available in multipart problems, which can currently only be authored directly in OLX. Multipart problems cannot be authored in Studio. See Multipart Components in OLX.

Studio and LMS support of partial credit is not guaranteed to work.

You can configure the following problem types so that learners can receive partial credit for a problem if they submit a partially correct answer.

By awarding partial credit for problems, you can motivate learners who have mastered some of the course content and provided a score that accurately demonstrates their progress.

For more information about configuring partial credit, see the topic for each problem type.

How Learners Receive Partial Credit#

Learners receive partial credit when they submit an answer in the LMS.

The LMS will distribute the total number of points available for the problem evenly across all problems. So in the following screenshot, with a two-part problem worth 2 points, if a learner answers one part correctly and the second incorrectly, they will be awarded 1/2 points.

A multipart problem with partial credit for an incorrect answer.

Partial Credit and Reporting on Learner Performance#

When a learner receives partial credit for a problem, the LMS only adds the points earned to the grade. However, the LMS reports any problem for which a learner receives credit, in full or in part, as correct in the following ways.

  • Events that the system generates when learners receive partial credit for a problem indicate that the answer was correct. Specifically, the correctness field has a value of correct.

    For more information about events, see Problem Interaction Events.

  • The AnswerValue in the Student Answer Distribution report is 1, for correct.

Course teams can see that a learner received partial credit for a problem in the learner’s submission history. The submission history shows the score that the learner received out of the total available score and the value in the correctness field is partially-correct. For more information, see Learner Answer Submissions.

Maintenance chart

Review Date

Working Group Reviewer

Release

Test situation

2025-11-06

sarina

Ulmo

Pass