Grades pre-1.9

Introduction

The Moodle 1.5 Gradebook has these features:

• Course Total Points
• Single Student Grades View
• Sorting (name or score)
• Grade statistics
• Grade weighting and categorization
• Letter Grades (ABCDF, C/NC, etc)
• Dropping lowest scores
• Excluding individuals from being graded on particular items
• Hiding the grades from an activity or category from student view and grades calculation
• Edit Assignment and Quiz grades in the gradebook

Advanced features such as grade weighting and categorization, letter grades, dropping and excluding scores and hiding scores are available by turning the advanced features on.

Adding items to the gradebook: Graded items are added to the gradebook automatically, when you create the item from the "Add" menu in your course.

So if you add an Assignment with a grade of 50, once you finish adding it, check the gradebook and it will be there. If you are using the advanced features covered in Chapter 4 , newly added items will show up in the "uncategorized" category.

Hidden items Items hidden in the course page using the 'eye' tool, may show up in the gradebook in two ways. There is a preference setting in preferences. If 'Show hidden items" is set to "No", hidden items will not show up in the gradebook for either instructors or students.

If 'Show hidden items' is set to yes, hidden items will still be invisible to students, as will their point values in the student view of the gradebook. However, in the instructor view, hidden items will show up with a white header box to show that they are currently hidden from students.

Gradebook Standard Features

Some new features in the gradebook are enabled by default, for all Moodle courses. These are explained below.

Single student view: In courses with many students and many graded items, it can be difficult to keep track of the grades for a single student as you browse the gradebook. By clicking a student's name, you can hide all other students and view just the grades for a single student.

Reprint headers: This setting in the preferences determines how often the activity names are printed in the online view of the gradebook. This is another feature to make it easier to view a large number of graded activities without losing track of individual grades.

The setting above will result in the view below, with the activity titles (headers) reprinted for every 2 students as shown below:

Sorting: Clicking the sort by Lastname will sort the list of students by their lastname. Sort by Firstname will sort the student list by their first name.

Grades may be sorted by clicking the arrows next to the course Total.

Statistics: You can view the statistics for your course's grades by clicking the "Stats" link(2).

This will open a pop-up window which will show the highest and lowest scores, the average, the median and mode, and the standard deviation.

Clicking the activity's name will bring you to the activity itself.

Activating the Advanced Features

If you would like to use the advanced features of the gradebook (such as grade weighting, letter grades, etc.) then enter the gradebook, click 'Set Preferences', then click the "Use Advanced Features" button.

The page will reload, and you will now see a new set of links for various advanced features along with new preferences settings. The settings let you choose what to display in the gradebook, as well as what to show to students.

Display Weighted Grades will show the % value of a catagory after the weighting you set (in the Set Weights link) has been applied. You may also limit what students see by clicking the drop-down box and choosing 'to Teachers only.'

Display Points will show the raw (unweighted) points a student has earned.

Display Percent will show the raw % (unweighted) of the total points the student has earned.

Display Letter Grade will show the letter grade earned so far (you can set the scale for this or change the grade letters in the "Set Grade Letters" link in the Advanced Features menu).

The Letter Grade preference determines how the letter grade is calculated, by Weighted Percent or Raw Percent.

Setting Categories

Once you turn the Advanced Features, all your graded items will go into the default "Uncategorized" category. If you would like to create special categories for graded items, click the "Set Categories" link.

This will open the category edting page. This is where graded items can be placed into categories, curved or set as extra credit items. New categories can also be added and existing ones deleted.

To add a new category, simply type its name in the "Add Category" box, and click "Add Category". To remove a category, select it in the Delete Category menu and click "Delete Category". Items inside a deleted category will not be deleted, they will simply revert to the Uncategorized category.

The graded items in your course will show up along the left side of the category editing page. To assign an item to a category, simply select the category name from the drop down list.

Category: Adjusts which category a graded item belongs to. Items that have not been assigned a category or were in a category that was deleted will be automatically placed in "Uncategorized"

Curve To: Allows you to curve grades. Set this item to what you would like the particular graded item graded out of. So if the max grade was 30 and curve to was set at 28 students grades and percents would be calculated against a possible 28 points rather than 30.

Extra Credit: Check this box if you would like a particular item to be calculated as extra credit. An extra credit item's points are not counted towards the category's total, so the points for these items are just added to the points of the other items in the category. Thus in a category with 100 point test and a 5 point journal, with the journal set to Extra Credit, the category total would still be 100 points, so you can give extra credit by giving students points for their journal. These points will increase their score for that category without increasing the total points for that category. Any graded item may be set to Extra Credit. When you have set your categories, remember to click the "Save Changes" button to record your changes.

Setting category weights

Once you have set up categories, you need to give the categories some weight. By default, items are put in the Uncategorized category, which is weighted to 100% the first time you start up the gradebook. To weight other categories, type the values in the weight box and click Save Changes. The gradebook with tally your weights and let you know if they add up to 100%.

Other features of the "Set Weights" window are dropping grades, bonus points, and hiding items.

Drop X Lowest: This is used drop the X number of lowest scores from a students grade calculation. The point totals for a category should be all the same value or unpredictable results may occur.

Bonus Points: Is used to give extra points that do not change the point total for a category. This can be used to adjust for unfair questions or similiar. These will be applied equally to all students. If you wish to selectively provide extra credit; add a new graded item and set it to extra credit in "Set Categories".

Hidden: if this box is checked it will remove a category from display and also from grade calculation. This an easy way to only add items to the gradebook after they have been graded. Since graded items that have not been categorized will automatically be assigned to "Uncategorized" you can set the "Uncategorized" category to hidden and then as you grade items move them to whichever category you like and students can then see their grade. For example, in the shot below, the Uncategorized category has been set to 0% and hidden. These means that new items being added to the course will go into this category, and so will not show up in the gradebook or in the calculations until they are moved into a category. The category Test has been set to a weight of 40% and to drop the 3 lowest scores. All the weights add up to 100%, and the system lets you know that.