Beyond traditional numbers and letters, Moodle’s Gradebook offers a powerful alternative for assessing student progress: Scales. This flexible feature allows educators to define custom verbal descriptors for grades, providing richer and more meaningful feedback. Let’s explore how to set up and utilize scales in your Moodle 3.7 Gradebook.
Why Use Scales?
Instead of a numerical score or a letter grade, scales allow you to use descriptive words that accurately reflect student understanding and achievement. For instance, “Not Yet Competent,” “Competent,” and “Exempt” offer a clear progression of learning. This approach can be particularly beneficial for competency-based assessment and providing qualitative feedback.
Setting Up Your Custom Scale
- Access Gradebook: Log in as a teacher, navigate to “Grades,” and then select “View Setup.”
- Navigate to Scales: Click on the “Scales” tab. You’ll see two default scales provided by Moodle.
- Add a New Scale: Click “Add a new scale” to create your own.
- Define Your Scale:
- Name: Give your scale a descriptive name (e.g., “Competency Scale”).
- Scale Values: This is where you define your descriptive terms. Crucially, list them from most negative/lowest to most positive/highest.
- Example: “Not Yet Competent, Competent, Exempt”
- Hidden Values: While not explicitly displayed to students, Moodle assigns numerical values to each item in your scale. For our example:
- Not Yet Competent: 0% (or numerical value 1)
- Competent: 50% (or numerical value 2)
- Exempt: 100% (or numerical value 3)
- Save Changes: Click “Save Changes” to finalize your custom scale.
Applying Your Scale to an Assignment
Once your custom scale is created, you can apply it to individual assignments:
- Go to Assignment Settings: Navigate to the assignment you wish to modify and click “Edit settings.”
- Adjust Grade Settings: Scroll down to the “Grade” section.
- Select Scale: In the “Type” dropdown menu, choose “Scale.” Then, from the “Scale” dropdown, select your newly created custom scale (e.g., “Not Yet Competent, Competent, Exempt”).
- Set Pass Grade: Based on the numerical values Moodle assigns to your scale items, define your “Grade to pass.” For our example (1=Not Yet Competent, 2=Competent, 3=Exempt), setting the pass grade to “2” means “Competent” or “Exempt” will be considered a pass.
- Save and Display: Click “Save and display” to apply the changes.
Grading with Scales
When grading assignments using scales, you’ll see your defined descriptive terms as options. In the grader report (with manual editing enabled):
- Select Grade: Click below the assignment for a student and choose the appropriate scale value (e.g., “Not Yet Competent,” “Competent,” or “Exempt”).
- Refresh for Visuals: Refresh the page to see color-coding (red for not passing, green for passing) reflecting the grades.
Student View of Scales
Students will see their grade displayed with the descriptive term you’ve assigned. The user report will show:
- The grade (e.g., “Not Yet Competent,” “Competent,” “Exempt”).
- The range of the scale.
- The corresponding percentage result (0%, 50%, 100% in our example).
Understanding Scale Totals
It’s important to understand how scales impact overall course totals. If an assignment uses a scale with three items (values 1, 2, 3), it contributes to the overall course total based on these numerical equivalents. For instance, if another quiz is out of 2, and the scaled assignment is out of 3, the total for these items would be 5 (2 + 3).
By leveraging scales in Moodle’s Gradebook, you can provide more nuanced and qualitative feedback, enhancing the learning experience for your students. Experiment with different scale configurations to find what best suits your assessment needs.