Since the discussion of extra credit appears in several tracker and forum issues, I will keep this personal subpage up-to-date on the current status rather than making a bunch of individual postings. Feel free to use the page comments tab if you have something constructive to say about this page. --Gary Anderson 19:05, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Response to [| [https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-12942 MDL-12942]]
Petr:
I added to the article http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Extra_credit to give reasons for use and methods of computation. Does that resolve the issue:)?
To consolidate my views on this at this overall issue at this point in time:
1. I think a global switch in $CFG is the best compromise to the over 100% on a given activity. The instructions for use will be use in a tutorial that I will write into docs on how to do this type of extra credit. For institutions where this is desired, it should be an acceptable approach (as opposed to needing it to be an admin block switch).
2. I think recalculating grades on changing this setting is unneeded and dangerous. I base this both on my own tests of my latest patch in MDL-12380, the use of a fixed patch at my school for more than 4 trimesters, and the experience reported of the LSU gradebook. I recognize that recalculation might happen at later times, but a one time disabling of this feature would cause all data to be lost of grades that exceed 100%.
3. Which brings me to my concern about the existing strategy of rounding to the boundary. If one accepts the premise that grades can never exceed a maximum value, then the software should reject such a condition and not write to the database -- it should give some type of warning or exception instead. This is most likely a data entry error or data corruption error and setting it to some bounded value corrupts the data further.
4. My objection to adding new aggregation types is in the adding of complexity to an already difficult gradeboook. I don't mind using those values in the database in the grade_items table, it is just that it should be set or not by a checkbox in the Category and items form, and not by making the user select a different aggregation type. I am also not sure if that method would allow individual items to be extra credit which is really what is needed. A better solution would be to add a column to the grade_items table, but that would require changing the scheme within a version.
5. We do have this second type of extra credit (optional activities) working at our school, but I hacked it by having the title of the activity appended with a **. This allows an item to be made extra credit without having to go into the gradebook. Still, we have worked out the computation issues, which just basically increases the numerator but not the denominator.
6. As for the international acceptance issue, it does seem that some of these features have a US focus (as does the letter grade scales). But I suspect that other teachers throughout the world give optional work, and at least in some cases, have a way for accounting for that in a student's assessment.
7. A selfish part of me is wishing that this issue is not addressed because I already have it fixed for myself and my colleagues. Any fixes in core will mean I have to go back and undo these things that are working. But ultimately I don't think the feature request will go away unless addressed. So, when the issue comes up in the community, I jump back in.
I do appreciate all your hard work for Moodle which I think is a great even if imperfect tool that can really improve educational possibilities throughout the world. I find it invaluable in my own classroom. It is just that my experience as a teacher does not match with your sensibilities as a programmer sometimes, although I remain hopeful that this process may still lead to a more successful product for teachers and students everywhere.
Take care,
--Gary
