Grades FAQ

General

Why is the new gradebook so complicated?

Added power and control requires more options. It is mostly the number of options and settings that gives the impression of complexity. Here are some of the main reasons for the changes made in the gradebook for 1.9:

• Previous gradebook did not scale well: it became very slow and unmanageable in large organisations with many students, activities and grades
• Grades were generated and stored by each module without much consistency
• Difficulty in producing new types of reports
• No Outcomes

Differences between 1.8 and 1.9

What improvements in the gradebook justify upgrading from 1.8 to 1.9?

• Faster execution, more noticeable with large sites
• More scalable
• More control over the display of grades, to teachers and students
• More aggregation options
• A simple, public API that can be used by any module to support grading
• Possibility to write custom grade reports
• A "Grade change history" record

Is the gradebook in 1.9 faster than in 1.8?

According to one early report, yes. There are other more thorough benchmark tests being conducted, and we will publish the results here when they are made public.

Reports

How do I create my own custom gradebook reports?

Here is a tutorial explaining all the main steps involved.

Aggregation

How can I grade some of my activities without the results affecting my students' course total?

1. Create two Grade categories, one for your activities still being graded, and one for your released activities.
2. Ensure that "Aggregate including subcategories" (an advanced option) is unchecked for your top level course grade category.
3. Edit the "unreleased" category's "course total" item.
4. Set the "grade type" to "none".
5. Tick the "Hidden" checkbox.
6. Save your changes.
7. Move all your activities being graded in the "unreleased" category.
8. Move all your activities already graded in the "released" category.

Categories

How many depths of categories/subcategories can I create?

There is no programmatic limit, but there are practical limits. Very deeply nested structures are difficult to manage. 3 levels of categories should be sufficient for most situations. Note that there is always at least one level of categories, since the Course category always encompasses all other categories and grade items, can cannot be deleted.

Modules

The activity module (Module name) doesn't support grading. How can I give my students a grade anyway?

You can create a grade item manually in the gradebook. You will have to grade your students through the Grader report interface (in editing mode).

I just graded some of my students using the (Module name) interface, but the results aren't showing up in the grader report. What's going on?

Here are some of the possible reasons:

1. The corresponding grade item is locked, or its parent category is locked.
2. The module code is not using the gradebook API correctly