There are many different options for marking and grading in Moodle. This document will explore many of those options, as well as link to supporting documentation for more support.
The grader report is where you are able to see all the participants in a course as well as their grades and all graded items. Any graded items you have added in your Moodle course (such as assignments or quizzes) will appear in the grade book. You can edit the grades from the gradebook by clicking on the activity title at the top of each column. This will take you to the activity grading page where you can add grades to the activity. Alternatively, you can turn on editing mode by clicking on the button in the top right corner. This will allow you to manually adjust the grades from the gradebook itself. You can also click the gear icon next to the grade you'd like to adjust to get more details on the grade and leave additional feedback.
Gradebook set up is how you will adjust the grade aggregation and weightings in your course, as well as create course categories. To access it, click on Grader Report drop down menu and select Gradebook Setup
Once you are in the gradebook setup, you will see all of the graded activities you have assigned in your Moodle course. The default on Moodle is that all of these courses are weighed equally, and the course total is the total value of points awarded for all assignments. For example, if you have 3 assignments in your course that are all graded out of 10, then the course total will be 30. Moodle has different ways to aggregate grades in a course. They include:
Feel free to explore the resources below to learn more about the gradebook. Please remember, that ultimately it is instructor responsibility to ensure that grades are entered and weighed properly.
There are many ways to grade in Moodle. If you are grading an activity that has grading enabled, such as an assignment, you can grade from the activity itself. You can click on the assignment and select "Grade" button above the grading summary
You'll be able to view student's submissions and leave comments, notes, and feedback, as well as grade directly from the assignment. By default, the grade will be set to a point value out of 100, which you can adjust in the assignment settings. Once a grade has been submitted, you have the option to notify the student of their grade by selecting "Notify student" at the bottom of the page. The grade will appear in the student's gradebook.
Alternatively, you may also grade directly from the grade reporter. This is a good grading method if there is no assignment on Moodle that corresponds to it (such as a presentation, or participation). Underneath the Grades tab, you will have a list of all participants and the items that have been entered into the gradebook, either automatically or manually. You can manually enter in the grade for an assignment by enabling edit mode and entering the total point value into the solid-line box on the left. The dashed-line box on the right can be used for comments or notes.
For more information on simple grading, check out the resources below:
Moodle Docs - Grading Quick Guide
Advanced gradingmethods allow for a more complex assessment. Using either a rubric or a marking guide allows you to grade according to a set of standards within the activity itself. The grade will be calculated and compiled within this grading screen and automatically applied to the gradebook. You must configure an activity module to use an advanced grading method. If the activity supports advanced grading, you will find it in the settings form under "grades". You can choose how you would like to grade from the three options:
You can review more information on rubrics and grading guides below.
Rubrics are often used in grading and allow the opportunity to provide clear and consistent feedback to students about their assignment. Rubrics have a set of criteria that must be met, and different levels of achievement of each criteria. The final score is calculated by comparing the score received against the worst and best scores possible.
To add a rubric to your assignment, follow the steps below:
To set up your rubric, first give your rubric a name and a description. Below the description box you will have the the skeleton of a table. The criterion that you are evaluating will be placed in the columns, and the level assigned to each criteria will be entered into the rows.
Enter in the criteria and the points you want assigned to each level, as seen in the example below. You can add more points or criteria and adjust the amount of points assigned to each. Adjust the rubric options below and then hit "save rubric and make it ready"
When ready to grade, follow the same steps as you normally would for simple direct grading. You will now have the rubric in the assignment that you are grading. You can select the achievement level for each criteria, and then hit "save changes" to calculate the grade which will appear in the grade book.
For more information on using the rubric, check out the following resources:
The marking guide is similar to the rubric, but more streamlined and simplistic. Like a rubric, there is a set of criteria where instructors can leave comments and a score on student work. However, each criteria only has one comment box, rather than different score levels you can assign as with a rubric.
To add a marking guide to an assignment, follow the steps below:
Give your marking guide a name and a description. Below the description box you will be able to add and edit criteria, create descriptions for students and for markers, and a maximum score for each criteria. If the total score you set for the marking guide is different than the maximum grade set in your activity, then the maximum score in the marking guide will be scaled to the max grade in the activity and rounded to the nearest available grade. You can also create frequently used comments to make marking easier. You can see an example of this below:
Once you have created your marking guide, select "Save marking guide and make it ready" to begin using it. Now when you grade the assignment, you will be able to grade it according to the marking guide.
For more information on using the marking guide, check out the following resources:
Activity Completion allows the instructor to set completion criteria for specific activities or resources. It can be a useful tool when tracking whether students have done necessary viewings or activities, without a grade necessarily needing to be attached. Activity completion can also be used to ensure that certain aspects of a course are only available once a particular activity or resource is marked as complete first. To enable completion tracking, go to the settings of the activity or resource and open the menu for activity completion. You can select how you would like the activity to be completed - whether by a student or whether certain criteria have been completed. The criteria range from simply viewing the resource, to needing to get a certain grade. You can adjust the "grade to pass" by opening the "grade" menu and entering in a value students must attain for a grade to be a pass.
You can use activity completion tracking to restrict access to other assignments. For example, if you want to ensure that students view a resource before attempting a quiz, or only making a quiz visible if students did not pass a previous assignment. Choose the activity you'd like to restrict, and then select "Restrict access". You will have many options for how you would like to restrict access, which you can set up according to your needs.