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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 1
September 6, 2011
Introduction to Moodle: Lesson 2
The Moodle Gradebook
Using the Moodle gradebook is optional, but is a good
application of Moodle if you give many
grades in a course. Once you have the gradebook set up, Moodle
will do all the averaging so all
you need to do is enter the grades. It also is an excellent way
to keep students informed about
their progress in the course.
A. An Example Course
Let’s assume that grades will be given for the following
activities in your course
Assignment #1 50 pts Discussion #1 25 pts Exam #1 100 pts
Assignment #2 50 pts Discussion #2 25 pts Exam #2 200 pts
Assignment #3 50 pts
B. Categories and Items
The Moodle gradebook classifies activities in terms of
categories and items.
Item: An activity for which you record a grade. o The seven
activities listed above all are items in the gradebook
Category: A set of similar items. o For the example course
above, there would be three different categories:
Assignments, Discussions, and Exams
We will start out the gradebook
for a course by entering
categories. When the categories
are there, then we will add the
items
.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 2
September 6, 2011
C. Starting the Gradebook
Open your Moodle course page and click on Grades in the
Administration
menu.
This will bring you to the “Grader Report” version of the
gradebook,
which should show your student names, but will be devoid of
grading
categories and items.
Click on Choose an action in the upper left corner of the
Moodle
window.
In the “Choose an action” menu, click on Simple View under
Categories
and Items.
You will see a display that
looks something like the
picture on the right.
Click on Add category
Enter Exams as the Category name.
Leave the aggregation method as
“Simple weighted mean of grades.”
Leave “Aggregate only non-empty
grades” checked.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 3
September 6, 2011
Click on Save Changes at the bottom of the screen.
You will see that the Exams category
has been added to the Simple View of
the course structure.
Click on Save Changes. (Yes. I know
you just did that. The changes in the
course structure itself need to be save.)
Do the same for Assignments and Discussions.
Click on Save changes.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 4
September 6, 2011
D. Weighted Mean of Grades1
At this point, we need to tell the gradebook the point values of
the different categories.
Exam #1 100 pts Exam category = 300 pts
Exam #2 200 pts
Assignment #1 50 pts Assignment category = 150 pts
Assignment #2 50 pts
Assignment #3 50 pts
Discussion #1 25 pts Discussion category = 50 pts
Discussion #2 25 pts
One way of doing this is to
change the aggregation
method for the course to
weighed mean of grades and use the category point
values as weights.2
Change the Aggregation for
the course to Weighted
mean of grades.
This will open up a Weight
column. Put the appropriate
weights (300, 150, and 50
respectively) in the weight
boxes for the categories.
Click on Save changes.
1 See the Appendix for an explanation of how weighted mean of
grades works.
2 There is another way: putting the category point totals in the
“Category total” boxes in the Simple View. I have
had problems with this method automatically checking the Extra
Credit boxes, which creates problems in the
gradebook., so I avoid it.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 5
September 6, 2011
E. Adding Grade Items
We now have all the
categories specified in the
gradebook.
Next, we need to add the
grade items
Grade items are items for which you will enter a grade in the
gradebook. In our example, the
grade items are
Grade Item Maximum Grade
Exam #1 100 pts
Exam #2 200 pts
Assignment #1 50 pts
Assignment #2 50 pts
Assignment #3 50 pts
Discussion #1 25 pts
Discussion #2 25 pts
NOTE: This lesson assumes that you plan on entering all grades
in the gradebook. You can
set up discussions or online assignments so that grades entered
into Moodle automatically are
recorded in the gradebook.
Let’s add the Exam grade items first.
Make sure that you have Saved changes.
Click on Add grade item.
Enter Exam 1 as the Item Name.
Set the Maximum grade as 100.
Choose Exams as the Grade category
Save changes.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 6
September 6, 2011
Repeat the above for the other exam,
giving it a maximum grade of 200.
When you have done this, the Simple
View of the course structure should
show two exams in the Exams
category.
Save changes.
Repeat the above for the three Assignments.
Set Maximum grade to 50
Choose Assignments as the Grade Category
Repeat the above for the two discussions.
Save your changes.
Your gradebook now
is set up
You may wonder
about the category
totals being 100.00.
The category total is
expressed in percent,
so the 100 represents
100%.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 7
September 6, 2011
F. The Grader Report
To see the gradebook in which you enter grades, select View,
Grader report
from the “Choose an action” menu.
The gradebook has four sections: one for each of the categories
and one for the
entire course.
Each category of grades includes a Category Total:
The category total is calculated as a percent. For
example, suppose two exam grades of 80 and 150 have
been entered. The maximum grades on the two exams
are 100 and 200, respectively. The maximum possible
is 300 pts. The grade then is 230/300 = 76.67%
A grade item in the gradebook is not counted if nothing has been
entered. If you enter a zero for
a grade item, then it will be counted.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 8
September 6, 2011
G. Entering Grades
To enter grades in the gradebook, click on Turn editing on in
the upper right corner
of the Grader Report.
Enter the grades in the boxes that appear.
When you move the cursor over one of the
boxes, the name of the student will appear.
IMPORTANT: When you are finished entering the grades, click on
the Update
button at the bottom of the gradebook to save them.
There is more to the Gradebook than explained here. See Lesson 2
for more information.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 9
September 6, 2011
H. Moving an Item or Category
Every now and then I will forget to put an item
in the proper category. For example, when
entering the information about Exam #2, I
might forget to put it in the “Exams” category.
In this case, Exam #2 will not be
included in any category, but will
be by itself at the bottom of the
Simple View display.
We need to move Exam 2 so that
it is in the “Exams” category.
Luckily, this is easy to do.
To move the “Exam 2” item, click on the up-down arrow icon in
the Exam 2 row.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 10
September 6, 2011
You will see a display showing each of the categories and items
separated by
boxes with dashed-line borders. Scroll down until you find the
“Exams”
category.
Click on the box under the “Exam 1” item.
You will see that the “Exam 2” item is in the proper place. You
can add the appropriate
maximum point values.
Save changes when you are done.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 11
September 6, 2011
I. Assigning Letter Grades
By default, the Moodle gradebook
displays the course grade as a percent.
You can change this to display a letter grade along with the
percent.
Go to the Grader report view of the gradebook. Click on Turn
editing on within the
gradebook.
Click on the Edit icon for the entire
course.
In the “Edit” window select what you would like to
see for the Grade display type.
For example, if you choose Percentage (letter) as
the display type, when you turn editing off within
the gradebook you will see something like the
following for the grade.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 12
September 6, 2011
J. Choosing Percentage Grade Ranges for Letter Grades
You can choose what percentage grades correspond to different
letter
grades. In the gradebook, select Edit Letters from the Choose an
action
menu.
You will see the default percentage ranges corresponding to
the
letter grades that have been set up for the Wofford Moodle
site.
If you want to make changes, check the Override site
defaults
checkbox.
Enter the values for the boundaries for the different letter
grade
ranges. If you do not use one or more of the letter grades,
for
example D+, you can specify that this grade is Unused.
Click on Save Changes when you are finished. You should see
the
new grade ranges for your course.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 13
September 6, 2011
K. Viewing More or Less
Look more closely at one of the categories. The default display
is the full view, which shows the
individual items and their total. You can change the category
display by clicking on the small
icon next to the name of the category.
For example, click on the negative sign icon at the right of the
Assignment category
label.
Clicking on the negative sign icon collapses the category so
that
only the total is visible.
This is the collapsed view that shows only the total. The icon
next
to the name now is a plus sign.
Clicking on the plus sign icon will toggle the gradebook display
to the next view, the grades
only view. The icon beside the category name now is a
circle.
Clicking on the icon again will toggle back to the full view
again. Try it to see what happens.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 14
September 6, 2011
L. Highlighting Passing and Failing Grades
You have the option of highlighting passing grades in green and
failing grades in
red. If you would like to do this for an item, click on that
item’s Edit icon in the
Controls row in the Grader Report View of the gradebook.
For example, to highlight the grades for Exam #1, turn editing
on and click on
the edit icon below “Exam #1.”
On the “Grade item” screen, specify the passing grade for this
item.
When editing is turned off in the gradebook, you will see that
passing and
failing grades have been highlighted in green and red
respectively.
M. Hiding Grades
It is possible to hide a grade item or category from students.
For example, you
may not want to show students the Nongraded category since it
does not directly
contribute to their grade in the course. You also may not want
to display an
item until all the grades have been entered for that item.
To hide an item in the gradebook, click on the edit icon below
the name of the
item in the Grade Report View.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 15
September 6, 2011
You can click on Hidden in the Edit
Category window to hide the item
permanently from the students.
You also can specify a date and time for
the item to be “unhidden.”
Save Changes.
N. Sorting Grades
You can sort the grades so they are ordered highest to lowest,
or vice versa. For example,
suppose you would like to sort the grades by the course total,
so the highest grades are at the top.
Click on the up-down arrow icon by Course total to sort with
highest grades at the top.
You can sort them from lowest to highest by clicking on the down
arrow icon.
To
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 16
September 6, 2011
To resort by last name, click on Surname.
O. Exporting Your Gradebook
When the semester is over, you can save your Moodle gradebook
by
exporting it as an Excel spreadsheet file or a text
document.
As an example, here is how to export the gradebook as an Excel
file.
In the Gradebook, select Choose an action and then Export,
Excel
spreadsheet.
You can choose what items you want to export
from the gradebook.
Click on Submit when you are ready.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 17
September 6, 2011
You will see a copy of the data as it will look on the
spreadsheet.
Click on Download to download the information
as an Excel file.
You can save or open the Excel spreadsheet that
you have downloaded.
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Moodle Lesson 2 – The Moodle Gradebook 18
September 6, 2011
Appendix: Weighted Mean of Grades
Moodle calculates course grades by taking a weighted average of
the category totals. Consider
this example:
Item Student’s Grade Maximum Assignment #1 30 50
Assignment #2 40 50
Assignment #3 50 50
Discussion #1 20 25
Discussion #2 22 25
Exam #1 80 100
Exam #2 180 200
The totals for each category, expressed as percentages, are
below. The weights equal the total
number of points for each category.
Assignments: 120/150 = 80.00% Weight = 150
Discussions: 42/50 = 84.00% Weight = 50
Exams: 260/300 = 86.67% Weight = 300
The course grade is a weighted average of the category totals,
expressed as percentages
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