Development:Gradebook usability improvements

Moodle 2.0

One of the goals of Moodle 2.0 is to improve the usability of the gradebook introduced in 1.9.

The purpose of this page is to present a list of proposed improvements, and gather feedback on these implementations before they make it into this important release. These proposed improvements are based on bug reports and forum posts that have been coming in since the 1.9 release.

We would really like your feedback on:

1. the changes already proposed here
2. any issues that you feel are not yet addressed

Please join the discussions and post your suggestions in the Gradebook forum.

Common frustrations

Below are some of the most often reported usability issues in the 1.9 gradebook, which we are trying to address. Several of these are grouped as sub-tasks under MDL-16913.

Assigning weights to categories and grade items

This is the most common frustration. Weights are used extensively in many institutions, and were used in 1.8. However, they are difficult to understand in 1.9, and difficult to set up. This issue is discussed extensively in MDL-15680.

Moving items to categories

Currently, the Edit categories and items page lets you move only one grade item or category at a time. It takes two page refreshes and two mouse clicks per move. This is very tedious and time-consuming when many items have to be moved around. MDL-13775 and MDL-12502 address this problem.

Removing the overridden attribute of individual grades

When grades are imported into an existing gradebook, or when grades are manually edited in the grader report, these grades become overridden, which prevents linked activity modules from updating this grade. Removing this attribute is very time-consuming, since one must enter the edit page of each individual grade, untick the checkbox and submit the form. This issue is discussed in this forum thread.

Viewing the overall contribution of each category and item to the course aggregation

The tracker issue MDL-13777 reports the difficulty in seeing the contribution of each grade item and category to the course total. Calculations and weights may apply, which are not visible in any of the current reports except in each individual category or item's edit page.

Patch for Edit Categories and Items page

Following is a proposed patch to the Edit categories and items page in the 1.9 gradebook. It addresses many usability issues while remaining simple. The following features are currently implemented:

Simple features

• Items and categories are displayed in a table instead of a list. This improves readability and will make drag and drop easier to implement.
• All advanced features are hidden by default, so that the interface by default is almost identical to the original
• An additional column has checkboxes for grade items. All selected items can then be moved to one of the existing grade categories for the current course. Javascript "Select all/Select None" links replace these checkboxes for categories, to make it faster to select or de-select items.

Advanced features

• Grade category aggregation type: changing this reloads the page, because the grade item weights/extra credits only apply to some of these aggregation types.
• Weight or extra credit: depending on the parent category's aggregation type, each category and grade item may have an input field or a checkbox for weight or extra credit. All these can be edited, then submitted with one click.
• Grade range is displayed for information purposes, but cannot be edited through this interface (it is most often controlled by the linked activity)
• Aggregate only non-empty grades
• Aggregate including sub-categories
• Include outcomes in aggregation
• Drop the lowest
• Keep the highest
• Multiplicator
• Offset

All these settings can be changed then submitted with only one page reload. Just be mindful that changing a category's aggregation type will reload the page and you will lose any non-submitted changes you made to the other settings.