Grading System

Grade link is sometimes referred to as Gradebook. Grades are scores given to students in a Cert course. Grade link or gradebook shows the scores given by each activity in the Course administration menu. Modules push student scores to grades. When activity modules produce grades, they use the gradebook public API to send their grades to the gradebook. These grades are then stored in database tables that are independent of the modules. The grades are still kept in the module database tables, and the gradebook will never access or modify these original grades.

The building blocks for grade link are;

The Grade Category

A grade category groups grade items together, and has settings for affecting these grade items. A grade category has its own aggregated grade which is calculated from its grade items. There is no limit to the level of nesting of categories (a category may belong to another category). However, each grade item may belong to only one category. Also, all grade items and categories belong to at least one, permanent category: the Course Category.

Adding a Grade Category

Add grade category;

• Select "Categories and items" from the gradebook dropdown menu.
• Click the "Add category" button near the bottom of the page.
• Give the grade category a meaningful name.
• Select grade category settings as appropriate. Advanced settings may be made available by clicking the "Show advanced" button.
• Click the "Save changes" button.

Editing a Grade Category

• Select "Categories and items" from the gradebook dropdown menu.
• Click the edit icon opposite the grade category you wish to edit.
• After editing the grade category, click the "Save changes" button.

The Grade Item

A grade item is a unit (an activity) where course participants are assessed through a grade or mark. The settings affect the calculation and display of the grades in the gradebook reports. Grade items may refer to course activities (e.g. a quiz, or an assignment), Outcomes or manual grades;

Activity-based grade items Modules that include a form of grading use the Gradebook API to generate a matching grade item, and to communicate their grades to the gradebook. The generated grade item can later be edited from within the Gradebook interface through:

Course > Grades > Setup > at the bottom of the page, select "Add grade item". 

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Items that can be edited in an activity based grade item;

• Item info General information about the grade item.
• Grade to pass This section specify the minimum grade a student must achieve to be considered to have passed this item. This must be in real grades, not a percentage. Once this is done, grades will be highlighted in red for fail and green for pass in the Gradebook.
• Grade display type This is the type of grade that is to be shown for each individual grade. Grade display types include;

1. Real - Grade from minimum to maximum range indicating total points received e.g. 0 - 100
2. Percentage - Grade from 0 - 100% indicating the total points received divided by maximum possible amount times 100.
3. Letter- Grade in the form of a letter representing a range of percentages.

• Overall decimal points This specifies the number of decimal points to display for each grade.
• Multiplicator Factor by which all grades for this grade item will be multiplied, with a maximum value of the maximum grade.
• Offset Number that will be added to every grade for this grade item, after the Multiplicator is applied
• Hidden Used to hide grade items from students.
• Hidden until Section where a date is specified to display hidden grades to students.
• Locked Whether or not to lock this grade item. A locked grade item doesn't accept changes to its settings or grades from its related module.
• Locked after A date after which the locking will be effective, usually after the grades release date.

Grade outcome items

These can either be generated by the creation of a new activity module (by selecting Outcomes in the module creation form), or manually created like manual grade items. A grade outcome item uses a course outcome as its grading type, such an outcome must be made available at the course level before a grade outcome item can be manually created.

Manual grade items

These grade items are created manually through: "Edit Categories and Items" page > click "Add grade item" button a form appears. Several options are available here which are normally automatically filled out by the activity module creating an activity-based grade items.

Users with Teacher permissions for the course can add "manual" grade items to the gradebook through the Categories and Items section.

Settings affecting grades

• Site-wide general settings
• Site-wide grade category settings
• Site-wide grade item settings
• Gradebook report settings
• Course settings
• Category settings
• Grade item settings
• Grade settings

Outcomes

Outcomes are specific descriptions of what a student is expected to be able to do or understand at the completion of an activity or course. An activity might have more than one outcome, and each may have a grade against it.

Gradebook reports

The gradebook includes a variety of reports. The default report is the grader report and other reports are available by using the "Choose an action.." pulldown menu under View to find:

• Grader report
• Outcomes report
• Overview report
• User report

See also

Activity Completion