By Michelle Read, Ph.D.; Katherine Fugate, Ph.D.

Snapshot: This article discusses the pros and cons of utilizing extra credit with your students. Both authors have utilized extra credit in the courses they teach. Moreover, the article presents various ways to add extra credit points in the Canvas LMS.

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There are a variety of reasons why one might want to assign extra credit for students. However, the use of extra credit in higher education has been a topic of debate for decades.

InsideHigherEd.com ran two articles on this topic, each expressing opposing views on the matter.

Professor explains why she offers extra credit (Sociology professor)	Professor explains why he doesn’t offer extra credit (English professor)
✅Extra credit opportunities are really “extra enrichment.” Uses relevant events to enrich learning. Extra credit given for attendance & reflection. ✅Usually, it is women who are already doing well in the classes that take advantage of the extra credit offerings. Students struggling often do not take advantage. ✅Extra credit is “simply an extra gift, a token, a gesture, a possibility.”	❌Students want to choose an ‘alternative’ rather than just complete the assignment(s). ❌“I have enough to read and evaluate. Why should I want to accept even more to do because students cannot be troubled to do the work they’re assigned?” ❌It isn’t “extra,” it is a “replacement.”

Interestingly, the sociology professor used to feel the same way as the English professor until she designed an extra credit assignment that not only complemented the course goals, but, as she said, “enriched” student learning with very current, relevant events which required not only attendance but also reflection in order to earn the optional extra points. These types of extra credit options do not serve to replace an assignment or assignments, instead they allow for additional learning opportunities. While the English professor acknowledges the reality of students’ lives, he does not, however, allow these realities to impact his instructional practices. It is important to recognize and address that in this past year of COVID, educators have hopefully learned how valuable and necessary flexibility in due dates can be. Opportunities for students to maintain their typical average-to-above-average grades via extra credit assignments can be vital to student success and overall morale during turbulent times, such as a pandemic or personal tragedy in the individual’s life. Often times, flexibility in due dates also provide benefit to instructors. Just because one is an instructor, this title does not preclude them from contending with these same realities of life. Sometimes the need for extra credit is not to pass the course due to missed assignments, but augment low scores on the assignments. It is also important to note, that students may simply be trying to boost their totals to the next grade level to improve their GPA or to meet their major’s program requirements. The option to take advantage of extra credit opportunities is the student’s; the job of the instructor is to make any extra credit opportunities relevant, meaningful, and aligned to course goals and objectives.

In 1993, Norcross et al., conducted a study interviewing instructors to determine why they would or would not offer extra credit. Reasons for offering extra credit included the following:

• Reduces student anxiety and builds confidence.
• Extra credit can be a second opportunity to learn the content.
• Some need a second time to learn and engage with the content in order to master the material.
• Capitalize on the student’s current degree of motivation. In doing the extra credit, they will learn.

There were also valid reasons noted for not providing opportunities to earn extra credit:

• Reinforces tendencies to not work hard if students know extra credit is an option.
• Time spent on extra credit means less time spent on regular assignments.
• If too easy to complete, extra credit reduces course academic standards and rigor.
• It’s unfair to those who did the assignments and did well.
• More work on the instructors’ part to create and/or grade extra credit assignments.

It is easy to see that the arguments from each of these professors correlate with what faculty have been debating for years. The sociology professor expands on these benefits by making her extra credit possibilities available for everyone and designs them to be specifically relevant to the content as an optional extension of, as opposed to a substitute to, what is already provided to students for understanding the content.

What constitutes a “good” extra credit assignment?

As with whether or not to  allow extra credit is considered good practice, the opinions on what types of extra credit are valuable is also debatable. The following list are some suggestions gathered from various resources, my own experiences, and from my work with faculty in designing their online/hybrid courses:

• Add opportunities to earn “professional” points when replying to peers’ initial discussion responses. Often, we do not give students any direction in how to do that. Guidance is helpful and will get you more than “Atta boy” from peers. You can ask repliers to make connections that require higher order thinking skills by asking questions or analyzing the content and critiquing it, while also making it necessary to provide additional resources that support or refute their claims, etc. As an instructor, I provide professional points for extra replies, extra resources, going back and answering questions posed to the original posters by their peers, etc. I try to promote ongoing discussions, furthering the goal of having enriching and meaningful learning opportunities.
• Adding extensions to assignments may come across as more work, and it is, but it is meaningful, relevant work and provides the opportunities to make up for points lost from their original submission.
• Provide additional, optional creative assignments. For example, I offer my students an extra credit assignment in which they create a video that offers advice to students who come after them. My students are often in their graduating semester, so the advice is for the next group of graduating seniors and advises them on various aspects of life after graduation.
• Optional blog assignments. Have students reflect and write about topics from your class.
• Suggest students attend events related to the course content. For example, when I was an undergrad (here at Texas State), my music theory professor had us attend a symphony to earn extra credit. I don’t recall him having us write a reflection, as the sociology teacher above did, but it would’ve been a good idea. “Did you like the symphony, why or why not?” would be a great starting point. You can add specific questions to prompt their reflection that tie into your course objectives.
• Extra creativity points. Allow for extra credit points on any creative assignment. Often students will do the bare minimum to make their project look good, but they’ll likely do more if they know you’re looking to provide points for extra appeal, wow factor, etc.
• Revise and explain. When a student does poorly on an assignment or exam, give them the opportunity to revise or correct and then explain their change in answers. If they were provided answers on the test, have them prepare a presentation and/or video that teaches the concept to earn back points.
• Video-record a science experiment. If you teach science or other subjects with demonstrations and don’t normally have students record themselves doing an experiment or demonstrating an activity, consider having them record themselves doing one for extra credit. They could do this by screen-recording if it is an activity completed on the computer or use their phones or use other recording devices.
• Book reports. An oldy, but a goody, often used in K-12, can work in higher education as well. You could also give the students options such as doing one as a paper, as a presentation/video, etc.
• Service work. Allow students to volunteer. The volunteer work should be something that would apply concepts learned in class or at least the opportunity to observe the concept’s application.
• To ensure rigor particularly for upper division or graduate courses, have students take the concepts and topics and explain/teach them for a layperson, someone who has not studied the discipline. This could be done via presentations, and/or videos. You could even tie in the points to how well received the project was by recipients via a satisfaction poll or have them create quiz questions. The latter of course, would require that someone volunteer to be the audience.
• In addition, for upper division or graduate students, have students do a case study analyzing a provided case that is relevant to their profession. For example, have an education student in a class management course analyze a video-based case study looking for specific events, such as poor behavior, not noticed by the teacher.

You may have noticed that any one of these examples, would actually serve as really great assignments too. Does it require extra work on your part as well? Probably. Grading is always going to take your time. Only you as the instructor can decide if doing so is worth your time and is providing meaningful learning experiences for your student(s) who need that extra support.

Ways to add extra credit using the Canvas LMS system

	Add points to an assignment score via the gradebook or Speedgrader	Add possible points to an assignment or discussion rubric.	Add points to a quiz via “fudge points”.	Add a stand-alone extra credit opportunity to an assignment category.	Override final course grade.
Extra credit for all students	Easy	Best Method (if planned in advance)	Easy	Easy	Doable, but requires extra steps.
Extra credit for select students	Easy	Doable, but the opportunity would be seen by all students.	Easy	Doable, but requires extra steps. Must assign the extra credit assignment to select students only.	Doable, but requires extra steps. Must turn on
Impact on total grade	Medium	Medium	Medium	Low	High
Submission/ grading via Canvas	Yes, but requires an extra step if only for select students.	Yes	Yes, but requires an extra step if only for select students.	Yes, but requires an extra step if only for select students.	Yes, but requires an extra step if only for select students.
Submission/ grading offline	Easy	Doable	Easy	Easy	Easy
Ease of instructor use ( ranked least (1)  to most (5) difficult.)	1	3	2	4	5
Use with weighted grading assignment categories vs. unweighted.	Does not matter	Does not matter	Does not matter	Required	Does not matter

For specific instructions on how to add extra credit points in Canvas, please see the instructions here, which can also be downloaded.

Resources:

Cohan, D. (2018). Extra, extra, read all about it: To offer extra credit or not to offer extra credit?. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from:
https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2018/01/16/professor-explains-why-she-offers-extra-credit-her-classes-opinion

Norcross, J.C. , Dooley, H.S. and Stevenson, J.F. (1993). Faculty use and justification of extra credit: No middle ground? Teaching of Psychology, Vol. 20, No. 4: 240-242.

Stauffer, W. (2019). Extra credit is not really extra. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from:
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/01/16/professor-explains-why-he-doesnt-offer-extra-credit-his-students-opinion