Where's the show-your-work-for-partial-credit button in MITx?

I stayed up late on Sunday trying to complete the second lab, which--how do I explain i?--involved building a circuit with a set of resistors that produced a certain maximum and minimum output voltage. At one point during the day, I had posted a question in the forum about a concept involved in the problem (the concept of superposition) and some nice people directed me the textbook to read more about it.

But I also came across an answer that included a link to another posting that, I assumed, discussed the concept in more depth. Well, it included a possible answer to the lab. This is another difficulty I have with MITx: avoiding posts that include explicit answers while I am looking for guidance on concepts. I can't unsee those answers, unfortunately.

The Honor Code forbids the posting of answers to graded assignments, but people still post these things. Sometimes people post equations that include every step for solving a problem and only leave out the answer. Really, as a participant in this class, I must keep my own honor code and be judicious when I consult the discussion forum for help with concepts. I phrase questions to make it clear that I just want help understanding a concept.

So my dilemma was whether to use the information I saw--which I would not have understood on my own--or go back to trying the lab by myself. After my poor wife stayed up trying to help me, I decided to give up and take the 0. They drop the two lowest lab scores anyway.

Still, this got me thinking about how MITx does not allow partial credit. I had tried out several different possible answers, and was able to get the correct minimum output voltage. Shouldn't that count for something? The circuit is either correct or incorrect. Perhaps this is a feature of large, free online courses: there aren't the teachers who can scan through thousands of answers to see if the answer deserves partial credit. But I can't help but wonder why it is helpful for students to get a perfect score on a lab or no points at all. Could the labs be broken into several steps in which students could receive credit for completing part of the system correctly?

Today, I looked up the answer to the lab and then posted a question in the discussion forum about the circuit diagram. In ten minutes, I had received two answers from people, and I think I understand my mistake now. And this is what I wanted all the time.