Moodle Grade Book 2.

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Overview
The Moodle grade book is a very flexible and powerful tool that can help
instructors monitor their students performance and provide timely feedback.
The grade book is, however, a complex tool, and it can be confusing to
instructors at first, before they get familiar with how the tool works. This
workshop provides an introduction to the Moodle grade book, and is
designed to help instructors get started using this useful component of
Moodle.
Table of Content
Overview..........................................................................................................1
Table of Contents.............................................................................................1
Grade Book Basics...........................................................................................2
Navigating the Grade Book..............................................................................3
View Grader Report.....................................................................................4
Setup Categories and Items........................................................................5
Aggregation.....................................................................................................6
Submitting final grades through WolfWare......................................................8
Additional Resources........................................................................................8

Last modified: April 21, 2015

Moodle Grade Book

Grade Book Basics

Using the Moodle grade book can be a challenge at first, but it becomes easier to
understand once you get accustomed to using it. Here are some quick
tips/reminders to get started.
1. To view the Grade Book, click Grades, which is located in the Settings
block under Course administration.
2. The Grade Book is organized with
various features on several
screens. To navigate between the
various screens of the Grade Book,
the tabs across the top, or use the
dropdown menu located in the
upper left, or use the Settings
block, whichever you prefer.

use

3. Two of the most commonly used

screens:
a. Select View Grader
report to list students down
left side of the screen and
display columns for grade
items and totals. This view is
instructors default view of
Grade Book.

the
the
the

b. Select Setup Categories

and
Items to display all grade
items in the course, organize
or
modify them, or create new
grade items or categories.
This
view allows easy modification
of
grade items and grade book structure; it does not show any student
grades.
4. Creating an Activity in Moodle (such as an Assignment or Quiz)
automatically creates a grade book item (and a column in the Grader
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Moodle Grade Book

Report) for that Activity. Grade items can also be created manually.
5. When you assign a grade to a student within an Assignment, the grade is
automatically recorded in the Grade Book. Quizzes can generally be
automatically graded and entered in the Grade Book, with the exception of
Essay questions, which Moodle does not automatically grade.
6. At the end of the semester, the Submit Grades tool in WolfWare can
automatically pull final grades from the Moodle Grade Book and submit
them to Registration and Records.

Navigating the Grade Book

The tabs across the top of the grade book provide access to the grade books
various features. The features that youre likely to use most heavily are described
first below.

Most commonly used:

View Grader report: student names and grades in a spreadsheet-style

display; described above.

View User report: grades for a single student or all students; similar to
what a student sees; suitable for printing.

Setup Categories and Items: create and modify grade items; described
above.

Setup Course Grade Settings: change grade book appearance and set
options; affects all course members.

Setup My Preferences: Grader Report: change grade book

appearance; affects only your view and is consistent across all of your
courses.

All Grade Book tabs:

View
Grader report: see Most commonly used above.
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Moodle Grade Book

Grade history: view the grade history for a student, grade item, or grader
NCSU Grader report: same as the grader report but the row and column
headers are frozen to make grading more convenient
Outcomes report: statistics related to any Outcomes that have been
created within the course. Contact the LearnTech help desk for assistance
using Outcomes.
Single View: view all the grades for one student or one grade item
User report: see Most commonly used above.

Setup
Categories and Items: see Most commonly used above.
Course Grade Settings: see Most commonly used above.
My Preferences: Grader Report: see Most commonly used above.
Scales
View: Grading scales (other than numeric) that are being used or are
available in the course. Use caution with grading scales, as they may not
function the way you think they do! Contact the LearnTech help desk for
assistance.
Outcomes
Outcomes used in course: Select Outcomes to use in the course (if you
have created any).
Edit outcomes: Create and edit Outcomes.
Letters
View: The table that your Grade Book uses to convert percentages into
letter grades. By default, the standard NC State undergraduate grading
scale is used.
Edit: Allows the instructor to override the default letter grade scale and use
a different conversion of percentages to letter grades in the courses Grade
Book.
Import
CSV file: Import grades to the Grade Book using a file formatted into
comma-separated values. Contact the LearnTech help desk for assistance
with importing Grade Book data.
XML file: Import grades to the Grade Book using an XML file. Contact the
LearnTech help desk for assistance with importing Grade Book data.
Export
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Moodle Grade Book

Export Grade Book data to a variety of formats. Exporting can be used for
backup purposes, or can be useful for managing grades outside of Moodle,
such as in a spreadsheet application. Contact the LearnTech help desk for
assistance with exporting. Available export formats are:
o OpenDocument spreadsheet
o Plain text file
o Excel spreadsheet
o XML file

View Grader Report

The Grader Report is made up of rows and columns, with students listed in rows
down the left side and grade items and categories displayed as columns and
arranged across the top.

Using the Grader Report

Grades from Moodle Activities are automatically entered, in most

cases. For grade items that were created automatically by Moodle (like
Assignments and Quizzes), you typically dont need to do any editing of
student grades in the Grade Book (since those activities are normally
graded on the activity screen itself). Whatever grade is given within the
activity automatically appears in the Grade Book. Some things, like essay
questions on quizzes, are not automatically graded.

Grades for manually created grade items can be entered directly in

the Grade Book. For manually created grade items, the Grade Book
interface is the only place to enter or edit grades. Before you can do any
editing in the Grade Book, you have to click the Turn editing on button
located in the upper right. Enter or edit grades, and then remember to
click Update to save your changes! Click the Turn editing off button
when finished.

Grades from Moodle Activities can be overridden. If you do edit

grades directly in the Grade Book, the grade will be considered overridden
and the grade entered in the Grade Book will replace any grade that might
be in the activity itself. A grade override in the Grade Book is indicated by a
tan shaded background.

Grades can be displayed as real scores, percentages, or letters. To

change the way that grades are displayed, go to Setup Course Grade

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Moodle Grade Book

Settings, and then in the Grade item settings section, select a different
grade display type. For example, if an assignment is worth 10 points, then a
score of 9 can be displayed in any one or two of the following ways:
o Real: 9
o Percentage: 90%
o Letter: A

Theres got to be a better way! In a class with a large number of

students, you can end up doing a lot of scrolling up and down and sideways
in the Grade Book. These tips may help reduce some of the inconvenience:
o To highlight a column, click the empty space in the column or row
header. This allows you to scroll to the bottom and still focus on a
specific column when you can no longer see the header at the top.
This works for rows too.

o If, instead of one long page of students, youd prefer multiple pages
with fewer students per page, you can change the number of students
that appear per page in Setup My Preferences: Grader Report.
In the General section, enter any number you like as the Students
per page setting, and then click Save changes at the bottom.
o Graded activities allow you to enter feedback to the student. If you
want to see this feedback in the Grade Book, go to Setup My
Preferences: Grader Report. In the General section, set Show
Quick Feedback to Yes. Now, when you turn editing on in the Grade
Book, both the score and the feedback are visible.

Setup Categories and Items

The Categories and Items screen displays all of your grade items and categories
but does not display anything related to individual student scores. Use this screen
to create, edit, and organize the items in your grade book and to define how
overall scores will be calculated from multiple grade items.

Using Categories and Items

Create a grade item. Click the Add grade item button. To use the basic
default values (you can always change them later), just enter a name for
the new grade item in the Item name field, and then click the Save
changes button at the bottom. The new grade item will appear both on the
Categories and Items screen and the Grader Report screen.

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Moodle Grade Book

Create a grade category. Categories are useful not only for better
organization but also for calculating grades. For example, you might use a
category like Exams to generate an overall Exams score that is calculated
from the scores of the individual exams. This calculation might be a sum, or
an average, or some other formula. To add a category, click the Add
category button.

Organize items and categories. Your grade items and categories can be
displayed in any order you wish. The order of items in the Categories and
Items screen also determines the order of the columns on the Grader
Report.
o To move a single item, find the row for that item and then click the
Move icon
next to the item name. A new window will appear that
displays all of your grade items separated by dashed boxes. Click the
dashed box that corresponds to the position you want the item to
have (above or below some other item). For example, if you were
moving Quiz 2 to place it directly below Quiz 1, then you would
click the dashed box below Quiz 1.
o To move multiple items between categories, select the items to move
by checking their boxes in the Select column. Then, select the
destination category from the Move selected items to menu at the
bottom. To move multiple items so that they are in no category, then
select the course name from the same menu.

Make grade items visible or invisible to students. You can make grade
items visible to students, or conceal them entirely with the Show/Hide icon
located in the drop-down menu in the Actions column.

Configure grade item settings. Click the Edit Settings icon from the
Edit menu in the Actions column to view the settings for any grade book
item or category. These settings can be used to change the way that a
particular grade item is displayed in the grade book. If you are unable to
change a setting, it may be because that setting is configured in the activity
itself rather than in the grade book.

Aggregation
Moodle uses the term aggregation to refer to the method used to combine a set
of multiple scores into a single score. Mathematically, there are many different
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Moodle Grade Book

ways to aggregate a set of scores, and different aggregation methods may be
useful in different contexts, even within the same course.
In any grade category in your grade book, you can set the aggregation method to
determine how the grade items within that category will be handled. For the
purposes of aggregation, the course itself is also considered a category.

Natural Weighting
Natural Weighting is default aggregation method in the Grade Book. It replaces
the Sum of Grades in Moodle 2.6. Natural weighting allows instructors to sum all
of their grades, weight all of their grades, or use some combination of sums and
weights. All Moodle 2.6 aggregation methods can be duplicated with this setting.

Summing Grades: By default, natural weighting sums all of the grades in

your Grade Book to calculate the Course Total. You do not need to take any
steps, other than adding your Grade Items, to use summing under this
method. The weight of each course grade is determined by the number of
points assigned to the Grade Item.

Weighting Grades: To weight one or

items/categories in your Gradebook,
select the item or category in the
Weights column and enter the
weight of the item/category. If you
not weight all items, the Gradebook
automatically adjust any remaining
weight and distribute among the
items/categories according to the
value of those items. Note: When
weighting grades is best to use a
point scale for all items.

all

do
will
point
100-

Other Commonly Used Aggregation Methods

Weighted mean of grades
Weights are assigned to items or categories, in order to have some grade
items count more than others toward the total score.
How the grade is calculated: Grade items are assigned weights in the
Grade Book. Points are not considered when using this method.

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Moodle Grade Book

Note: If the total of all weighted items is 100, then the weights are
effectively percentages, but item weights are not required to total 100 (e.g.,
relative weights of 1 and 2 are acceptable).
Mean of grades

Graded items all have equal weight regardless of their individual number of
points.

Example of when to use: In a set of quizzes, you want all to have equal
weight, but the individual quizzes have a different number of total points.
Item
Quiz 1
Quiz 2
Quiz 3
Quiz 4

Total Points
100
50
30
20

Weight (% of total)
25%
25%
25%
25%

This aggregation method is more often used within a grade category (e.g.,
to generate the average score within a set of equally weighted quiz grades)
than to aggregate the entire course grade, since in most courses all
assignments do not carry equal weight toward the final grade.

Simple weighted mean of grades

The number of points that a grade item is worth determines the weight of
that grade item.

Example of when to use: In a set of quizzes, individual quizzes have a

different number of points, and the points of the quizzes indicate the weight
of each individual quiz.
Item
Quiz 1
Quiz 2
Quiz 3
Quiz 4

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Total Points
100
50
30
20

Weight (% of total)
50%
25%
15%
10%

Moodle Grade Book

By default, items that are not yet graded do not contribute to the total
score, so students see a grade based only on what has been marked rather
than all (non-graded) items. The default can be changed to include nongraded items as zero if desired.

Less commonly used aggregation methods

Highest grade: Reports the highest grade of a group of grades, after

normalization.
Lowest grade: Reports the lowest grade of a group of grades, after
normalization.
Median of grades: Reports the middle grade of a group of grades. If there
are two middle grades, then the mean of the two middle grades is reported.

Submitting final grades through WolfWare

If your final course grades are recorded in Moodle, you can submit them
automatically to Registration and Records through the WolfWare interface. The
grade book column that will be submitted to WolfWare is the Course total
column.
1. Using your Unity ID and password, log in to WolfWare at
https://wolfware.ncsu.edu/.
2. In the Instructor Toolbox menu on the right, click the Submit Grades
button.
3. Click the course link for which you are submitting grades. WolfWare will
display your course roster and grades.
4. Using the checkboxes in the Submit column, select the grades to submit.
Links above the roster also allow you to select all or none.
5. When the grades to submit have been selected, click the Submit Selected
Grades button at the bottom.

Additional Resources

http://docs.moodle.org/28/en/Grades
http://docs.moodle.org/28/en/Grades_FAQ

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