Grades

Note: This page, together with the pages listed in the block on the right, describe the gradebook in Moodle 1.9 onwards. For documentation on the gradebook in Moodle prior to 1.9, see Grades pre-1.9.

Introduction

The concepts of grades and of gradebook have been completely revisited in Moodle 1.9. These words and modules were used in earlier version. There are important differences that users who are upgrading to 1.9 need to understand and this should also help new users.

The two central ideas of grading in Moodle 1.9 are:

1. Grades are scores attributed to participants in a Moodle course
2. The gradebook is a repository of these grades: modules push their grades to it, but the gradebook doesn't push anything back to the modules

The three building blocks of the Gradebook in Moodle 1.9 are

• The grade category

A grade category groups grade items together, and has settings for affecting these grade items

• The grade item

A grade item stores a grade for each course participant, and has settings for affecting these grades

• The grade -Student scores in a course

A grade has settings for affecting how it is displayed to the users, as well as locking and hiding functions.

As an overview: Grades can be calculated, aggregated and displayed in a variety of ways, the many settings having been designed to suit the needs of a great variety of organisations.

Many activities in Moodle, such as assignments, forums and quizzes may be given grades. Grades may have numerical values, or words/phrases from a scale or rating system.

Grades can also be used as outcomes and as arbitrary text attributed to each participant in a course.

How Grades Get Into the Gradebook

Grades pushed by modules

When activity modules produce grades, they use the gradebook public API to push (or send) their grades to the gradebook. These grades are then stored in database tables that are independent of the modules. The grades are still kept in the module database tables, and the gradebook will never access or modify these original grades.

The gradebook, however, provides administrators and teachers with tools for changing the ways in which grades are calculated, aggregated and displayed, as well as means to change the grades manually (a manual edit of a grade automatically locks the grade in the gradebook, so that the module which originally created the grade can no longer update that grade in the gradebook until the grade is unlocked).

Grades Manually Added by Teachers

Users with Teacher permissions for the course can add "manual" grade items to the gradebook through the Categories and Items section.

Settings affecting grades

Being the smallest unit in the gradebook, the grade is affected by many settings at different levels. Here is a list of these levels, in hierarchical order:

• Site-wide general settings
• Site-wide grade category settings
• Site-wide grade item settings
• Gradebook report settings
• Course settings
• Category settings
• Grade item settings
• Grade settings

Outcomes

Outcomes are specific descriptions of what a student is expected to be able to do or understand at the completion of an activity or course. An activity might have more than one outcome, and each may have a grade against it (usually on a scale).

Gradebook reports

The gradebook includes a variety of reports. Select the grades link in each course administration block. The default report is the grader report and other reports are available by using the "Choose an action.." pulldown menu under View to find:

• Grader report - The main teacher view of a course gradebook.
• Outcomes report
• Overview report
• User report

Additionally on "Choose an action" menu, teachers can find interactive category reports which can alter the way the "View" reports appear. The "My report preferences" link (on a tab in earlier versions), enables teachers to change how the grader report is displayed.

Grades organisation

Teachers may organise grades into grade categories, import and/or export grades, and make grade calculations.

Symbols to represent ranges of grades may be set as grade letters.

Administrators may control the appearance of the gradebook site-wide by adjusting settings available via the grades link in the site administration block:

• General grade settings
• Grade category settings
• Grade item settings
• Gradebook report settings

See also

• Using Moodle Gradebook forum

Video tutorials:

• Basic Moodle Gradebook howto
• Gradebook reports
• How to use the grade item settings and grade letters at admin level
• Grade category settings
• How to set up the gradebook
• How to use outcomes in Moodle
• How to export grades from the gradebook
• How to use gradebook site settings and defaults
• How to set up calculations in the gradebook (basic)
• How to set up calculations in the gradebook (advanced)
• How to change the display of grades in the gradebook