Managing grades

Main Page ► Managing a Moodle course ► Tracking progress ► Grades ► Managing grades

Show Gradebook To Students

At Carleton, the Gradebook is not visible to the students by default. If you wish to make it visible to students, you need to change the setting in the Course Page settings.

From the main course page, go to the Administration block
Click the "Edit Settings" link
Scroll to the Appearance section and click to expand the options
Set the "Show gradebook to students" setting to Yes.

Setting up the Gradebook

Activities that receive grades, such as Assignments, Quizzes or possibly Forums, automatically create entries into the Gradebook. But you can also add additional Grade items to include activities that happen outside of Moodle. Grades can be grouped into Grade categories and weights can be applied to customize the grade calculations.

Create Grade Categories

On the Gradebook Setup tab, scroll to the bottom of the page
Click the Add Category button
Enter a name for your category (e.g. "Quizzes")
Click the Save Changes button
Repeat for any other categories you need

Move Grade items into Categories

On the Gradebook Setup tab, check the box to the extreme right of any of the grade items you wish to move
Scroll to the bottom of your grade items list
From the "Move selected items to" pull-down menu, choose your Category
The page will reload and move your grade items into the category you selected
Repeat for any other items you need to move into categories

Assign weights to your Categories or Grade Items

The gradebook will automatically calculate relative grade weights based on the maximum grade values of each grade item. But you can override those weights and enter your own on either categories or individual grade items.

On the Gradebook Setup tab, in the Weights column check the box to the left of any weight you would like to override
Enter the relative weight you wish to assign to that item
Repeat this for any other Categories or Grade Items you wish to customize. Weights at each tier of the gradebook should add up to 100.
When all weights are assigned, scroll to the bottom of the list and click the Save changes button in the lower left.

Note:

If your weights do not add up to 100, Moodle will adjust the weights so that they do.
The weights for grade items within a category will also be calculated out of 100, as opposed to being calculated out of the weight value of the enclosing category.

Below are several different options that will help teachers organize and set up the Gradebook.

Grade items

A grade item is usually an activity where students are given a grade. These items are usually the grades from assignments, quizzes, attendance, etc., but it is also possible to create a new grade item that does not appear in the course page. This is best used when students are given an offline assignment and the teacher would like to input the grade into the Gradebook.

Extra Credit Items

Grade letters

Grade letters are the visual representation of a student's grades in the form of A through F. The grade percentage that dictates what letter the student gets can be changed in the Gradebook options

Grade categories

A grade category is useful to help organize similar assignments in the Gradebook. For example, you can create a large "Quiz" category that holds every quiz given in the course for easy viewing. You are also able to weight the entire section of "Quizzes" and it will automatically weight every quiz in that category evenly. These individual weights can be overridden if needed.

Grade calculations

Grade calculations can be used to change the way that the Gradebook will calculate grades. This setting should be rarely changed as Moodle will preform all calculations already.

Grade history

Users with access to the Gradebook are able to look at when grades for certain users are changed and what they have been changed from. This is helpful for when there is a continual activity that changes over time and the teacher regrades the activity each time