Moodle: Grading: LSU Overview

Grading in Moodle involves several components, best practices, and guidelines to streamline the grading process. The Gradebook presents all the graded items in a course in a table that can be edited and adjusted as needed. Tools in the gradebook such as the Gradebook Builder and Gradebook Setup allow instructors to create categories and apply aggregations as needed.

Grading Best Practices

• Try to grade within the activity. When entering grades for Moodle activities such as Quizzes or Assignments, always try to enter the grades within the activity. Each activity has its own mechanism for grading, and this ensures the same grading process for all students.
• Add any manual grade items in Gradebook Setup. Grades for activities not set up in Moodle can also be kept in the Moodle gradebook. To do this a Manual Grade Item will need to be created from within Gradebook Setup. Then you can manually enter grades for those items by navigating to the Gradebook and turning on editing.

NOTE: Moodle will allow you to manually enter grades for Moodle activities in the same way that you do for manual grade items if necessary. Use this option sparingly. When you do so, you are overriding the grade calculated by Moodle. Once saved, overridden grades will be displayed with a beige background to remind you that the grade has been overridden.

• Make category weights equal 100. When using the Custom Weights aggregation, make the sum of all category weights equal 100. By doing so, it will always be clear what percentage of the course total is derived from each category (the weight will denote the percentage). To edit category weights, refer to step 6 of Moodle Gradebook: Creating Categories.
• Use Extra Credit sparingly. If a given category contains an extra credit item, adding the extra credit is the last calculation performed for that category after all other calculations. For this reason, small extra credit maximum grades might have a more significant impact on grades than intended.

NOTE:  Be aware that Moodle does not cap grades at 100%. If a student has a high score and also accrues enough extra credit to exceed 100% for a given grade item, the extra points will carry over, in all aggregations, all the way to the course total.

Blank vs Zero Grades

By default, Moodle will exclude empty grades from grade calculations rather then treating them as zeros so that grade items that are not yet complete do not lower students' averages. However, Moodle cannot distinguish between a grade item (such as a quiz) that the student has missed and one that has simply not yet been completed. For that reason, instructors must enter zeros for students that miss a quiz or assignment or the student will not be penalized for the missing grade.  

Posting Grades

During midterm/interim and final exam periods, the Post Grades block will automatically appear in the block drawer, which is located in the course sidebar. This block transfers the letter grades from your Moodle gradebook to Workday Student. 

You can can transfer midterm or interim grades as many times as you wish, and only the last submission is kept in Workday. You may only transfer final grades once. If you need to make subsequent changes, you must contact the Registrar's Office as they can no longer be reset in Moodle. Grades can also be manually entered in Workday Student.

Build the Gradebook

How to add a Gradebook Category

How to add a Manual Grade Item

How to add an Extra Credit Item

How to change aggregation methods

How to exclude or include empty grades

How to enter/override grades in Gradebook

How to change grade display type

How to move items in Gradebook setup