M11 - Moodle gradebook

Keywords: assessment, feedback, grading, marking, reports, reporting.

What is it?

The Moodle course Gradebook (or Grader report as it is also known) allows tutors and course administrators to manage grades for Moodle activities, such as assignments and quizzes, in that course. The Gradebook collects items that have been graded from the various assessed activities in Moodle and allows you to view and change them, as well as sort grade items into categories and calculate totals in various ways. When you add an assessed activity in a Moodle course, the Gradebook automatically creates space for the grades it will produce and then adds the grades as they are generated, either by the system (e.g. quizzes) or by you (e.g. assignments). Many activities in Moodle can be graded, including glossary and database entries (using ratings), lessons, quizzes, assignments, questionnaires, SCORM/AICC packages and scheduler meetings. 

Why use it?

To manage and view all student grades for a particular module.

To define the way grades are displayed to students - e.g. letter grades, percentages, scale grades etc.

Who can use it?

Tutors or course administrators can use the Gradebook to view and manage grades. 

Students can use the Gradebook to view their own grades only.

Before I start...

When viewing the Gradebook there are three different types of reports you can view:

Grader Report

1. The Grader report is shown by default and shows each student down the left side and each category, gradable activity and grade for the current Moodle course along the top of the page. The list of students can be sorted using the arrows alongside each activity name. Clicking the name of the activity will take you to the student's attempts for that activity, assuming there are some. The course total displays to the far right, so you may need to scroll down and to the right to see this.

User Report

1. The User report is what students see by default and shows the grade, percentage and feedback for each activity in the course. To view a student's grades, choose their name from the Select all or one user drop down menu on the right. You can filter by user to see the grades for any of your students. To view all the students' grades on one page (one after the other) select All users from the menu.

Overview Report

1. The Overview report is only available for students and lists all the Moodle courses they are enrolled on, with their total grade for each. If they click on the Course name, they will see all the grade items and grades for that course (this will take them to the User report). To see this report for yourself click on the Settings menu (to the left of the page) and expand Switch role to.... then click Student. You will need to select a user from the drop-down menu on the right of the page (don't worry, students only see their own grades). Once you have finished seeing (roughly) what students see, click return to my normal role in the top, right corner of the page.
2. Students can see their own grades for each activity providing it is not hidden. Grades can be hidden in the Gradebook and within the settings for that activity (e.g. Quizzes allow you to hide Scores from students). If you don't want your students to see grades ensure they are hidden in both the activity and the grade book.

How do I...?

Access the Gradebook

To access the Gradebook in your Moodle course, go to the Settings block and under Course, administration click on Grades.
As a tutor or course administrator, you will see three types of reports below the tabs: Grader report, Outcomes report and User report.

Change the way grades display to students.

To change the way grades display to students:

1. Login to Moodle and navigate to your course.
2. Go to the Course Administration > Gradebook setup, or from the Gradebook click the setup tab.
3. Alongside the assessment, you want to check/change the display of the grade click Course grades settings tab.
4. Choose the relevant grade display type, a combination of options are available between
   1. Letter - letters or words used to represent a range of grades.
   2. Percentage
   3. Real - actual grade they received in the assessment. For Turnitin, this will likely be a score out of 100.
5. Click save changes.
6. When students view the Moodle course Gradebook or the MyFeedback report, they will now see the grade appear in the selected format.

Export the Gradebook

1. From the Gradebook page, click the Export tab.
2. Select the specific grade items you wish to export. Possible grade items include Turnitin assignments, Moodle assignments, and the course total. At the end of the list of grade items there is an option to select all/none.

   
   

   Export options

   Under Export format options, you can select to Include feedback in export, which will include any Moodle assignment Feedback comments. This does not include inline comments, only the general feedback comments a marker can leave on a Moodle Assignment submission.

   You can also untick Exclude suspended users if you want to include students who have been un-enrolled in a course.

3. Click download to generate a spreadsheet of the Gradebook.

Caution

You may need to hide all the grades in your course, to prevent students seeing them before ratification. You can do this by following these steps:

1. The Categories and items tab allows you to organise your grade items and aggregate grades using various methods for all the items in that category. A top-level category with the name of the Moodle course is added by default to the Gradebook and cannot be deleted. More information about grade categories is available in the next section of this document.
2. You can hide all grades in your Moodle course by clicking the eye () alongside the top-level category in the Actions column or hide individual categories and items using the same method.

Examples and case studies

• Transferring marks between spreadsheets with VLOOKUP
  Find out how to transfer marks between a spreadsheet downloaded from the Moodle GradeBook into the A26 report that can be downloaded from Portico. This will save time and avoid mistakes that are often made when manually transferring marks from one system into another.
• Conditional (IF) operators can be used in grade calculations of the grade book. This can be used to specify a grade below which certain activities must not fall.

Questions & Answers

• Moodle Docs Grades FAQ - these are helpful, there is questions about everything from showing groups in the gradebook to weightings on grade items. 

Further information

Also see: 

Also from moodledocs:

• Advanced grading methods.
• Exporting grades - this might be useful if you need to work with grades offline, or send them to someone else.
• Grade import - you may need to import grades, if you have made any offline changes or are bulk importing a manual grading item.