What sets your SmartBook score?
How much you complete before the due date. McGraw Hill’s student overview says “Assignments must be completed by the due date to receive scoring credit” and “Your assignment score is the percentage complete on due date as indicated by the progress bar.” Its grading guide for students puts it in points: scores are “based on number of points accumulated before the due date.”
Progress comes from finishing concepts, not from answering a set number of questions. McGraw Hill’s SmartBook assignment tips say “Progress in SB assignments is made by completing concepts” and “The number of questions you get is influenced by your accuracy.” The point value is up to your instructor; McGraw Hill tells instructors to “Set the point value for the assignment.”
| Question | What McGraw Hill says |
|---|---|
| What is the score? | “The percentage complete on due date as indicated by the progress bar.” |
| When does it lock? | At “100% completion OR the due date,” whichever happens first. |
| Does confidence count? | “The confidence level does NOT affect your progress bar.” |
| Do wrong answers count against you? | A wrong answer is “repeated later in the same session,” and accuracy sets how many questions you get. |
| When are grades posted? | When the progress bar shows full completion, or at the due date if the assignment isn’t finished. |
| Is late work accepted? | Only if the instructor chose to “allow late submissions.” |
| Does Recharge count? | “Unlike SmartBook, Recharge is not points-based.” |
Does confidence level affect your SmartBook grade?
Not your score. Each question asks you to check your answer and rate your confidence, and McGraw Hill’s student overview says “The confidence level does NOT affect your progress bar, but it DOES encourage you to think about your level of understanding.”
It still matters in two ways. McGraw Hill’s tips ask students to “Make an honest attempt to assess your confidence level on each question,” because “Doing so allows SB to more accurately direct you to the materials you need to study.” And your instructor can see the ratings: the SmartBook user guide says the Learners’ Metacognition tile lets instructors “download a report that details which questions they answered correctly/incorrectly and how they rated their confidence in their answers.”
Do wrong answers lower your SmartBook score?
They make the assignment longer rather than taking points away. McGraw Hill’s tips say “If you answer a question incorrectly, it will be repeated later in the same session to give you a chance to learn. It might not be the exact same question, but rather a variant that represents the same learning objective.” The student overview adds that “If you incorrectly answer multiple questions on the same concept, you may be provided with a learning resource— often a section of the text.”
The user guide also says “Recharge, like SmartBook, requires students to answer two questions in a row correctly.” In practice, more misses mean more questions before the bar fills, and an unfinished bar at the due date is a lower score.
What happens at the SmartBook due date?
Your score locks and the assignment turns into Recharge. The user guide says SmartBook assignments “are auto graded,” and grades post at one of two times: “When a student fully completes the assignment, as indicated by the progress bar,” or when the student hasn’t turned it in by the due date, in which case it “will be graded based on how much they have completed in the assignment.”
Late credit is your instructor’s call. When building the assignment, instructors “Decide whether to allow late submissions and set a date and time for those,” and the user guide says assignments turn into Recharge “once the assignment due date (and extension date, if applied) has passed.”
Does Recharge on McGraw Hill change your grade?
No. The student grading guide says “After the due date passes, the assignment automatically goes into recharge mode and you can continue to work the assignment for additional study. Work completed in recharge mode will not affect your original score.” The user guide is shorter: “Unlike SmartBook, Recharge is not points-based.”
One trap: the completion figure you see can include Recharge. McGraw Hill’s student guide says “Completion and Time on Task include data from before the due date and after the due date in recharge mode,” and to see your actual score you go back to assignments, where “Graded assignments will have a link to ‘See report’.”
What does your instructor see?
The score, your progress, and more. McGraw Hill’s instructor guide says the Assignment Results score “reflects how much of the assignment the student completed before the due date,” and “If you have paired this assignment with your LMS, this score will also appear there,” which is how it reaches a Canvas gradebook. The user guide lists dashboards for assignment progress (including late submissions), completion time, the Learners’ Metacognition report, and Challenging Concepts, defined as “an accuracy of less than 65% across the class.”
Where Silent Student fits
Silent Student is a desktop app for Mac and Windows, made by El Dorado Ignition LLC, that works through Canvas courses and the courseware they link to. It has a dedicated SmartBook solver: it opens the assignment from Canvas, answers each question, and stops when the progress counter is full, which is the thing SmartBook grades.
- It rates every answer High confidence. That is not a calibrated read of how sure it is, McGraw Hill asks students for an honest rating, and your instructor can download those ratings.
- When SmartBook sends it to a reading after a miss, it opens the reading and then returns to the questions, so a run with several misses takes longer. AI can be wrong.
- McGraw Hill Connect homework and ALEKS run on our general screen-reading agent, which is less predictable than the SmartBook solver. It does not take proctored exams.
- Plans are $11.99, $24.99 and $49.99 a month, with no free plan. It runs on a Mac with Apple Silicon or Windows 10 or later, in public beta.
McGraw Hill’s Terms. McGraw Hill’s Terms of Use, last updated 16 October 2026, say you may not use any “agent, robot, spider, or other automatic device or program” to access the service. They also bar you from using or enabling a third-party “browser extension” or “AI agent” to act within it, including “to view, complete, answer, or submit any assessment, assignment, or other activity”, unless McGraw Hill authorizes it in writing. McGraw Hill says it may suspend or terminate an account it has reason to believe was used in violation. In our reading, that reaches AI agents like ours. We are not lawyers, so read the Terms yourself. Your school’s academic-integrity policy is separate and may be stricter, and under Silent Student’s Terms (section 5) you are responsible for both.
More detail: Silent Student on SmartBook and Best AI for McGraw Hill Connect, compared.
Questions people ask
Does confidence level affect your SmartBook grade?
Not directly. McGraw Hill’s SmartBook overview says “The confidence level does NOT affect your progress bar,” and the score is the percentage complete on the due date. Your instructor can still download a report of how you rated your confidence.
Do wrong answers lower your SmartBook score?
Not as a penalty, but they slow you down. McGraw Hill says “The number of questions you get is influenced by your accuracy” and a wrong answer is repeated later as the same question or a variant. More misses mean more questions before the progress bar fills.
Does Recharge on McGraw Hill change your grade?
No. McGraw Hill’s student guide says “Work completed in recharge mode will not affect your original score,” and its user guide says “Unlike SmartBook, Recharge is not points-based.”
What happens if you don’t finish SmartBook by the due date?
You get credit for what you finished. McGraw Hill’s user guide says an assignment not turned in by the due date “will be graded based on how much they have completed in the assignment.” After that it turns into Recharge mode.
Can you do SmartBook late for credit?
Only if your instructor allows it. When building a SmartBook assignment, instructors “Decide whether to allow late submissions and set a date and time for those.” Otherwise the score locks at the due date.
Can my instructor see my SmartBook confidence ratings?
Yes. McGraw Hill’s SmartBook user guide says the Learners’ Metacognition tile lets instructors download a report that details which questions students answered correctly or incorrectly and how they rated their confidence.
Does the SmartBook score show up in Canvas?
If your instructor paired the assignment with your LMS. McGraw Hill’s instructor guide says “If you have paired this assignment with your LMS, this score will also appear there.”
Does Silent Student work on SmartBook?
Technically yes, but McGraw Hill’s Terms of Use bar AI agents, so read them first. Silent Student has a dedicated SmartBook solver that rates every answer High confidence and stops when the progress counter is full. It does not take proctored exams.
Sources
All McGraw Hill documents, fetched and checked 19 October 2026.
- SmartBook Overview – Student (PDF)
- SmartBook: Grading and Recharge for Students (PDF)
- SmartBook: Grading and Recharge for Instructors (PDF)
- SmartBook User Guide (PDF)
- SmartBook – Assignment Tips
- McGraw Hill Terms of Use, last updated 16 October 2026
Related guides: Is there an ALEKS answer key? · Does WebAssign automatically submit? · What happens when a MindTap assignment is late? · All guides · How to use McGraw Hill Connect and SmartBook · McGraw Hill Connect · Weighted grade calculator
Written by the company that makes Silent Student. Silent Student is not affiliated with or endorsed by McGraw Hill. McGraw Hill, Connect and SmartBook are trademarks of their owners.