Talk:Grade letters

This is great! I am typing while the cheese I am eating is falling out of my mouth! A few things I would mention:

1. I know I looked for this kind of thing a couple of times and don't know how I missed it.... possible because there are so many way to come back to what look like similar or may be similar screens.... So as I suggested I would perhaps have a separate doc that pulls method three from the gradebook set up about aggregation and this item (could be just via links) so that the folks asking for a, "do a, b, c to have a gradebook that does this, this, and that, quick and easy....." can get up and running quickly and thereby reduce tension and frustration (see 3rd item below)
2. There is some discussion about editing having to be off..... As I have seen before in trying to write docs for php.ini for example, sometimes you have to tel folks what they probably should do, when they have gone too far, why it seems things aren't working.... I cal these types of items "gotchas" because, well I know you've been there and done that ;=} - I have argued elsewhere that we really need to test out docs on naive users so that we can assess how effective/viable they are
3. To combine a bit of item 2 and 3.... Using an audio/video recording tool to capture a users response to new software and their attempts to use the docs to solve their problems is a critical tool in development - all too often I see projects where 95% of project time has been spent on 5% of the code to address a hand full of features which will likely be used by 5% of the users (I am not saying this is the case here.....) I see way too many posts for folks who are incredibly frustrated with Moodle, and while I may be quick to argue that this may be because they are lazy (hence my suggestion that forum posting include active search - plug plug) if the docs are inadequate or over the heads of users, we have no business releasing the software....
4. Seems to me there is another way to add letter grades to assignments by clicking the columns or some such, so if there are alternative ways to do x,y,z, there maybe should be links, footnotes, etc. It is easy enought to do footnotes in the wiki......

Marc Grober 14:24, 7 September 2008 (CDT)

---

I suggest adding this section:

Displaying letter grades in the grader report

To change category and course summaries (called aggregations) to display letter grades, do this:

1. In the gradebook, select Categories and items
2. Click the edit icon for Category total or Course total
3. From the Grade display type menu, select letter

Repeat this for any other totals that you want displayed as letters.

To change individual graded items to letters, do this:

1. Click on grades and then select 'edit course settings' from the drop-down list.
2. Under 'grade item settings', select 'grade display type' to be letter.
3. To change the percentages that correspond to each letter, select 'edit letter' instead.

(taken from http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=105171. Please check for accuracy.)

I also think this section should be called Assigning and Editing Letter Grades (we don't use the term "grade letters". Is this a U. S. English problem? If so, maybe we could say Assigning and Editing Grades as Letters? Whatever you think.) There is more in this section than editing, though. Or could be.

A. T. Wyatt 12:25, 7 September 2008 (CDT)

ATW, thanks a lot for your suggestion :-) which I've added to Grade letters, with a little rewording. When you say "I also think this section should be called Assigning and Editing Letter Grades" do you mean that the page should be renamed? This page is linked from two places in Moodle - the edit letters page in the gradebook and also Site administration > Grades > Letters, so it should explain these pages and, I think, everything else about letter grades.

Regarding "grade letters" vs "letter grades", I'm not aware of any US/English difference. I'm fine with either term ;-) --Helen Foster 09:19, 2 October 2008 (CDT)

Override site defaults

On my 1.9 site there is no "Override Site Defaults" option on the grade letters page. Is this information correct? --Howard Miller 09:30, 24 April 2008 (CDT)

Howard, you're very observant :-) The override site defaults checkbox in Site administration > Grades > Letters was a bug, which has now been fixed. It only appears on the grade letters editing page for a course. --Helen Foster 09:39, 24 April 2008 (CDT)

Please consider adding this text to the section about Grade Accuracy

Moodle does not round a grade when converting it to a Letter Grade. For example, if a student must earn a grade of at least 90% for an A and their grade is 89.99999% they will not earn the A. It is important to remember this when displaying grades for your students. If you plan to display both the percentage grade and the letter grade, then it would be a good idea to set the option for OVERALL DECIMAL POINTS to 5. That means the percentage grade will be consistent with the Letter grade earned. If the OVERALL DECIMAL POINTS is set for 4 decimal places the grade of 89.99999 will be displayed as 90.0000 (B), which is not consistent with the Letter system.

The default OVERALL DECIMAL POINTS setting for the site is set by a Site Administrator. Site Administration menu > Grades > Grade Item Settings > Overall decimal points The Site Administrator also determines if the teacher must select the Advanced button to view the setting. However, the default setting for a course can be changed by the teacher. Course Administration menu > Grades > Settings

After the default course settings have been determined by the teacher, they may still make changes for individual grade items and for category grades.

The other option would be, if you are displaying grades rounded to the nearest whole number, then set A to be any grade >= 89.5% That way, anything displayed as 89% is B, and anything displayed as 90% is A.--Tim Hunt 06:51, 12 August 2010 (UTC)