The Moodle Gradebook is a powerful tool for tracking student progress, but its initial setup can seem a little daunting. This guide will walk you through the essential steps to configure your Gradebook for optimal use in Moodle 3.7, covering grade setup, course grade settings, and grader report preferences.
Organizing Your Grade Items
Upon entering the “Grades” section and navigating to the “Setup” tab, you’ll see a list of your activities (assignments, quizzes, H5P, SCORM packages, lessons) with their respective maximum grades and weightings.
Reordering Items: Moodle initially lists items in the order they were created. To change this, click the left-hand arrow next to an item, then click “Move.” A dropdown menu will appear, allowing you to select where you want to place the item in the list. This ensures your Gradebook reflects your desired sequence of activities.
Understanding Weightings: By default, Moodle assigns equal weighting to all grade items. This means each activity contributes equally to the overall course grade, regardless of its maximum score.
To adjust weightings:
- Check the box next to the assignment you wish to modify.
- Enter the desired percentage in the “Weight” field. For example, if “Assignment 1” is worth 50% of the total grade, enter “50.”
- Click “Save Changes.” Moodle will automatically recalculate and distribute the remaining percentage across the other unweighted items.
Grouping with Categories: For better organization and clearer reporting, you can group related activities into categories.
- Click “Add category” at the bottom of the page.
- Enter a name for your category (e.g., “Core Activities,” “Secondary Activities”).
- Click “Save Changes.”
- To move items into a category, click the “Move” icon next to the item and select the desired category from the dropdown.
This allows you to see sub-totals for each category, providing a more detailed breakdown of student performance.
Course Grade Settings
The “Course Grade Settings” tab allows you to configure how grades are displayed and calculated across your entire course.
- Aggregate Position: This setting determines whether course and category totals appear before or after the individual activities.
- Minimum and Maximum Grades Used in Calculations: It’s generally recommended to leave this as “Grades as specified in the grade item settings” to ensure the most current grade settings are used.
- Grade Display Type: You have several options for how grades are displayed to students:
- Real: Displays the actual numerical grade.
- Real and Percentage: Shows the numerical grade with its percentage equivalent.
- Letter: Displays a letter grade (e.g., A, B, C) based on defined percentage ranges.
- Letter and Real: Shows both the letter and numerical grade.
- And other combinations of percentage, real, and letter grades.
- The “Letters” tab defines the percentage thresholds for each letter grade.
- Decimal Places: Control the number of decimal places displayed for numerical grades.
- Overview Report – Show Rank: Displays the student’s rank within the class.
- Hide Totals if They Contain Hidden Items: This crucial setting prevents students from deducing the value of a hidden grade item by comparing visible totals. It’s recommended to keep this enabled (default) to show a dash (-) when a hidden item is present.
- User Report Views: You can customize which columns are visible to students in their user report (e.g., “Calculated Weight,” “Grade Range,” “Percentage,” “Feedback,” “Contribution to Course Total”).
Grader Report Preferences
The “Preferences: Grader Report” tab allows administrators to control what teachers and assessors can see and do within the Grader Report.
- Show/Hide Icons: Enables or disables the visibility icon next to each grade, which controls student access to individual grades.
- Show Quick Feedback and Enable Ajax: If enabled, this allows teachers to directly edit grades and add quick feedback within the Grader Report itself. Changes made here will be highlighted with an orange box, indicating they were modified within the Gradebook rather than through the original activity’s grading interface.
By understanding and utilizing these setup options, you can tailor your Moodle Gradebook to accurately reflect your grading scheme, provide clear insights to your students, and streamline your grading workflow.