Introduction to Moodle: Lesson 2 The Moodle Gradebookwebs.wofford.edu/whisnantdm/training/Moodle/Moodle... · Introduction to Moodle: Lesson 2 The Moodle Gradebook Using the Moodle

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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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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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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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



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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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






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.


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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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.


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.


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.


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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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.


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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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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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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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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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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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.


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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Documents

Introduction to Moodle: Lesson 2 The Moodle Gradebookwebs.wofford.edu/whisnantdm/training/Moodle/Moodle... · Introduction to Moodle: Lesson 2 The Moodle Gradebook Using the Moodle