Gradebook

All the grades for each student in a course can be found in the course gradebook, or 'Grader report' in Settings > Course administration > Grades.

The grader report collects items that have been graded from the various parts of Moodle that are assessed, and allows you to view and change them as well as sort them out into categories and calculate totals in various ways. When you add an assessed item in a Moodle course, the gradebook automatically creates space for the grades it will produce and also adds the grades themselves as they are generated, either by the system or by you.

The grades displayed are initially displayed as the raw marks from the assessments themselves, so will depend on how you set those up e.g. an essay out of 36 will appear as however many raw marks that student got, not a percentage (although this can be changed later, see below).

Note that various default options for the gradebook are set at system level by the administrator and can be marked as being overridable by you, or fixed. This means that the options will not always be set up the same way for every user when they see the grader report for the first time.

Display

Along the top of the grader report are several rows: first the course, then the category, then the columns for each graded activity (for example: Assignment, Quiz, Lesson). Any activities settings which were left "uncategorised" will appear in the general category which is named after the course by default (any category name can be changed).

You can add a row showing the range of possible scores by selecting 'Show ranges' in 'My report preferences.

There are three ways that the categories can be displayed:

• Grades only - without the category totals column
• Collapsed - Category total column only
• Full view - grades and the aggregates (the totals column for the category)

Each section has a small icon immediately to the right of its name. Clicking this will cycle through these display modes for that category. + goes to grades only view, o goes to full view and - goes to collapsed view.

Highlighting rows and columns

When your gradebook starts to grow, it can be hard to keep track of which student and which assignment a cell refers to. Highlighting solves that.

• Clicking on empty space in the cell that contains the students name will toggle the highlighting of that entire row
• Clicking on empty space in the cell at the top of each column will toggle highlighting of the entire column

(Note: this requires Javascript to be enabled in your browser.)

Sorting by columns

You can sort by any column. Click the symbol near the top of a column to sort by that column. This will change the symbol to a single down arrow. Clicking again will sort lowest-to-highest, changing the symbol to an up arrow. The arrows will toggle between these two states until you click on a different column.

The student name columns do not have the symbol. Clicking on either the first or last name will cause the report to sort.

Unsorted

Sorted

Unsorted

Sorted

Highlighting scores that are either adequate or unacceptable in red and green

Turn editing on and click on the edit icon in the controls cell at the top of the column. You can then (maybe need to click 'show advanced') see the option to enter a 'grade to pass'. Once set, any grades falling above this will be highlighted in green and any below will be highlighted in red.

Note that the highlighting will not show if the Grader report is viewed in the editing mode.

Horizontal scrollbar

A horizontal scrollbar enables teachers to scroll grades in the grader report. (Note that this feature is not available for IE6 users or for users who have have the screenreader setting in their profile set to Yes.)

Horizontal scrollbar

Mouse-over tooltips

Each grade cell in the table has a tooltip indicating the user and grade item to which the grade belongs.

Filtering the gradebook by groups

If you change the course settings Group mode to Visible groups or Separate groups a drop-down menu will appear in the gradebook to allow you to filter your students by groups.

Editing

Note: Editing anything in the gradebook refers to editing the grades only and none of the available operations bear any relationship to editing the main course page i.e. the appearance of your course page cannot be influenced by anything you do in the gradebook. The "Turn editing on" button functions separately from the main course one, so editing can be on in the gradebook, but simultaneously off when you switch back to course view. This is because editing grades and editing the course page are separate capabilities. Roles such as 'non-editing teacher' may only have one or the other.

Altering the grades

You can click "Turn editing on" at the top right to show an edit icon next to each grade. Clicking on the icon will bring up the editing screen for that grade which will allow you to set the grade, its written feedback and a number of other attributes.

Alternatively, you can choose "Quick grading" and "Quick feedback" in 'My preferences' to make the report appear with editable boxes containing each grade, so you can change many at once. This capability can be a real time saver, but make sure to save at reasonable intervals lest a pageful of changes be lost.

Note: If you make changes here, they are then shown highlighted to indicate grades which have been manually changed.

Hiding columns or individual grades

Turning on editing then clicking the "Show show/hide icons" link will give you the familiar show/hide eye icon next to each grade and at the top of each column. For more information, read about grade hiding.

Recalculating

If you change any part of an assessment e.g. alter the maximum grade for one of the questions in a quiz, you may find that the columns do not yet reflect the change you have made. Click Turn editing on twice to force the gradebook to re-check.

Gradebook capabilities

There is just one gradebook capability, View the grader report, which is allowed for the default roles of manager, teacher and non-editing teacher.

Extending the gradebook

The Gradebook can be extended in three main ways:

1. Grade reports:

Which are the main way to view and manipulate grades

• LAE Grader Report Alternative to Grader report that scrolls vertically and horizontally without losing student columns or grade item header rows. Lot of additional enhancements.
• Upload PDF Grader Report lets you view assignment grades, comments and lateness in a report

2. Grade import plugins

Which allow data to be imported from external sources

3. Grade export plugins:

Which allow you to export grade data for other systems

• PDF document This is moodle plugin for exporting grades in PDF format. It is developed by using "Moodle PDF library"
• Checklist This is a grade export plugin which will create an Excel spreadsheet containing all the checkmarks from a single checklist.

See also

Join the discussions about gradebook plugins in the Gradebook forum.

• Video explaining the different gradebook reports