• Create an assignment worth 0 points, grade the student higher than 0 points
• Pros: Simple, works well with total point final grades.
• Cons: Less simple with weighted totals.
• If using weighted total, harder to tell the impact to a student’s grade.
• ((points attained ÷ points possible) × weight) + … = #% out of 100%.
• Must be in an assignment group with weight > 0%.
• Can’t do the math – divide earned points by zero.

• Removes # of lowest scoring assignment from student’s possible points, increasing their overall score.
• Applies automatically to everyone for their lowest graded work in an assignment group.
• You can choose to not drop certain graded work.
• Pros: More equitable. Can be enabled or disabled at any time
• Cons: Requires setting up assignment groups to organize your assignments. Applies to everyone regardless of effort.

• Allows you to choose across assignment groups what you want to drop, or only drop for certain students.
• Excused assignment doesn’t count towards possible points, which if used on low scoring assignments can raise overall score.
• Pros: More granular control of dropping assignments. Useful for excusing work done in class when student is sick
• Cons: Requires you to manually select which assignment you want to excuse for each student, and track that you’ve already excused work.

• When grading in a rubric, you can give more points for a criteria than it's worth.
• Pros: Can track extra work per criteria.
• Cons: Doesn’t display rating description (e.g. Excellent, Good, Needs Work, etc.), and requires creating a rubric in Canvas.

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