You can create a simple and effective gradebook on Moodle that will help to calculate participants' grades and monitor their progress throughout the course. The following video shows the most effective way of creating a basic gradebook. If you are going to use the Gradebook feature, it would be best to set yours up before you add any of your gradeable course content to your Moodle page. This will save time later when you are looking to incorporate those grade items into your gradebook.
Please note entering grades on Moodle is not the same thing as entering your final grade for the semester. The final course grade must be submitted via myWagner.
Gradebook Setup
1. To access your gradebook, navigate to your Course Admin Settings Bar and select Grades
2. In the upper left corner, find the drop down Grader Report menu. From that menu select Gradebook Setup
3. In this example, we are going to set up a weighted gradebook organized into different categories that are all assigned different percentages. The first step is to create your categories. Select Add Category.
4. Give your category a name. In this example, we will create five categories Assignments, Quizzes, Focus Papers, Forums, and Attendance. Don't worry about the percentage weight right now. You will take care of that later on. The following will show an example of one category, but all of the remaining categories will follow the same setup process.
On the Aggregation menu, select Simple Weighted Mean of Grades.
Press Save Changes.
5. Now that your categories are created, the next step is to enter the percentages that each one of those categories is worth. To do this, you need to set up your overall gradebook category to reflect that format. To do this, navigate to the top of your gradebook setup until you see the name of your course. Mine is entitled Christina Dempsey 4.0 Test Course, but yours will be whatever the name of your course is.
Once there, find the corresponding edit menu to that category and from it select Edit Settings
6. From the Aggregation Menu choose Weighted Mean of Grades. Save the changes.
7. You should now see a Weights column in your gradebook. You can now go ahead and enter the percentage weight for each category in this column according to your syllabus. You can also enter it with decimals if you prefer. The percentages should add up to 100%.
8. You now have a basic setup for your grades. In the settings menu of each item that you create going forward, you should see a Grade section that you can expand. In this example, I will use the example of an Assignment that I am creating.
Notice I have expanded the grade section in my assignment settings. If the maximum grade for your item is 100, you can leave it as that. If it is a different grade, you can enter it in the Maximum Grade box. Please keep in mind that once this assignment has submissions that have already been graded, you will not be able to change the maximum grade.
The Grade Category menu is where you will choose what category this assignment should be placed in. Since we created our categories first, we will be able to choose the right place for this item to go. This is why creating the basic setup of your gradebook FIRST is always a good idea. Make sure to save the changes here as well.
Moving Items Within Gradebook
Let's say, for whatever reason, your grade item is not in the place where you want it to be in your gradebook. This could be because you forgot to put it in the category during the setup, or maybe you setup some of your grade items before you created your categories. You can easily move items in your grade book around by following these instructions:
1. Find the item that you want to move in your Gradebook Setup
2. On the far right, click the check box to select it. (You can do multiple items at once if you wish)
3. Scroll down to the bottom and find the Move Selected Items To drop down menu. From it, select the category that you would like to move your grade items to.
The item should now have moved into the correct category
Creating Manual Grade Items
If you would like to incorporate gradeable classwork into your Moodle gradebook that was assigned in class or off of Moodle in some other way, you can set up manual grade items within your setup page. To do so, follow these instructions:
1. At the top of your Gradebook Setup page, select Add Grade Item
2. Give the grade item a name and enter the maximum grade for that item. Put the item in the correct category as well. Press Save Changes.
3. The item should now be visible in it's corresponding category. Notice the difference between a manual grade item and one that is automatically created for you.
When you use any kind of gradeable feature on Moodle, a space for it will automatically be created for you in the gradebook. These items are identified by whatever icon is associated with the Moodle feature you have chosen. These items cannot be edited or deleted from the gradebook setup. They can only be changed from the course front page itself.
Manual grade items are identifiable with an empty square. These items can be edited or deleted directly from the gradebook setup from the Edit menu of the item.
Using the Grader Report to Enter Grades
Every course has a gradebook associated with it. You can access the gradebook from the Course Admin Settings Bar by clicking Grades.
Since we setup our gradebook in advance, you will be able to see all of your categories and whatever grade items you may have already added from here.
I am going to zone in one one category in particular so it is easier to see and explain. In this example, we will look at the Assignments category.
Notice how each grade item has it's own specific column with an empty text box in which to put the grade. Each category also has its own total column where you can see what the student's overall grade is depending on the weight you put for that category. You should never edit a grade that is tallied in the Total section of any category. If there is an error, it is most likely in the item column itself, or the grade setup.
To enter grades, simply put the grade percentage in the solid lined box and click Save Changes. Notice when you save, the total is automatically calculated for you based on the grades you entered for each specific item.
Students also have a Grades section on their end where they can keep track of everything as you enter grades into the system.
If you are using Moodle to administer a Quiz, the grade will automatically be entered into the gradebook once the student is finished taking the exam. You can control whether the student sees their grade or not in the quiz settings. If you are using essay questions or any question type that requires manual grading, Moodle will hold back the grade until you have made the necessary changes.
Grading From Inside an Assignment
As indicated previously, you can put a grade in for an item created using the Assignment feature in the grader report, but there is alternative way to grade them from within the assignment itself. The grades that you enter here will sync with the grader report seamlessly.
1. Once you have submissions from your students, click into the Assignment itself from the front page on Moodle.
2. You can view all of your student submissions by check View all submissions. Click Grade to go right to the grading page.
3. After pressing Grade, your screen will show the student's submission on the left and your grading options on the right hand side.
4. You can enter a grade in the box below Grade. You can also enter feedback comments for the students to see in the text box below.
5. You may also want to download the submission from the student, provide feedback from directly within their paper, and then return it back to them. This is known as Feedback Files. If you do choose to do this, you can download the submission which will show up above the grade box, and once you make those changes, you can re-upload it into the Feedback Files box located below the Feedback Comments box.
6. When you're finished, press Save. If you want to save and continue on to grading the next submission press Save and Show Next.