Before we dive into learning about Moodle’s gradebook it is important to consider how you will be collecting assessment items. The reason for this is many activities in Moodle automatically enter a line item in the gradebook so these activities need to be added to your course before you can accurately set up your gradebook.
If you are assigning assignments, how are you collecting them? Are students printing a hard copy to give to you in class or are you having your students submit via an assignment drop box in Moodle. If students are submitting via Moodle you will need to add the assignment drop box to your course, you can keep it hidden until you finalize the due dates and description!
If you are asking students to complete quizzes, how are you facilitating these? Are students completing quizzes in class, or are you having your students complete them online in Moodle. If through Moodle, you will need to add a quiz activity to your course as well, you can keep it hidden until you finalize the day and time students will take the quiz!
Other activities that are automatically added to the gradebook are Forum when Whole forum grading is turned on, some H5P activities, Lesson and Workshop. We do have tips and tricks for removing these activities from grade calculations but for now let’s stick to the basics. Check out the Introduction to Grades video!
Moodle’s gradebook is powerful, there are many ways grades can be calculated, aggregated and displayed. There are many settings and a variety of ways to accomplish what you want so, at times, it can seem pretty overwhelming. The Gradebook setup video below is not meant to be an exhaustive tutorial, rather it is meant to be a high level overview that outlines how to do some of the most requested tasks. Check out the video below and come see us in virtual office hours for further help with your gradebook.
Frequently Asked Questions
The visibility of students’ grades in Moodle is controlled by you, the course teacher. So, maybe you have set aside a few days to mark your final assignment, and you don’t want students to be able to view their mark until you have completed marking the final for everyone. You can hide this grade until you are ready.
To do this:
Go into the gradebook setup, find the activity or item you want to hide and next to it, under actions select Edit then select Hide.
Note
If an item is in blue in the gradebook setup (i.e. glossary), then students will see this grade. If the item is greyed out, then students will not be able to see the grade for this item.
- Go into your course and click Grades in the left hand navigation drawer.
- Select the Export tab and directly under this, then select what type of file you would like to export under this. For instance, I always select Excel spreadsheet.
- Under Grade items to be included, deselect select which graded items you do not want to be included in this spreadsheet. OR, click Select all/none in blue at the bottom of this section and then check off which items you would like included.
- Then, under the export format options, select the options you would like and check off the box next to Include feedback in export if you would like your feedback to the students also included in your spreadsheet.
- Click Download.
You can preview what your students see when they go to look at their grades, if you like. This could be useful if a student keeps telling you they cannot see their course total or certain grades in your class and you want to see what they are seeing and if the issue lies with your gradebook setup or not.
To do this:
Go into your course and in navigation drawer select Grades, then select the view tab, and then Grader report tab. Select the icon to the left of the pencil icon, to see the grades of that student. This shows you what the student sees when they are looking at their grades for your class.
To change the maximum grade for a grade item go to the gradebook setup and click Edit and then Edit settings for the grade item you wish to update. Then on this screen update the maximum grade field and click the Save changes button at the bottom of the page.
Note
If the grade item is an activity the maximum grade will have to be updated in the activity itself.
If you have already entered grades for the grade item or activity, you will have to select whether or not you want to rescale the existing grades.
If you choose Yes Moodle will rescale any existing grades so the percentage remains the same, for example if a students mark was 5/10 = 50% and you want the maximum grade to be 5, Moodle will rescale the students grade to be 2.5/5 = 50%.
If you choose No Moodle will not rescale any existing grades so the percentage does not remain the same, for example if a students mark was 5/10 = 50% and you want the maximum grade to 5 Moodle will keep the students grade the same so the grade now becomes 5/5 = 100%.