12.1. Using GradesThere isn't much to do with the current grades area. You can access the grades area by clicking the Grades link in the administration area on the left side of the main page of your course. After you click the link, you will be taken to the Grades display, as shown in Figure 12-1. The students in the course are listed in the lefthand column. Across the top, you'll see all of the activities you have added to your course with the possible points for each. The far-right column records the students' total points and the total possible points. Figure 12-1. Grades areaOnce grades have been recorded in the grades area, students can check their grades by clicking on the grades link in the administration area. They can see only their own grades, not the other students', as shown in Figure 12-2. Figure 12-2. Student grade view12.1.1. Adding Manual AssignmentsOne of the chief complaints with the current gradebook in Moodle is the difficulty of adding a manually scored assignment. Scores for activities you've added to your course are automatically added to the gradebook, but what if you want to record a grade for something that isn't a Moodle activity? Currently, the only way to add a manually scored column to the gradebook is to create an offline assignment. When you add the offline assignment to your course, it will create a column in the grades area. After you enter grades for the new assignment, they will appear in the grades table. 12.1.2. Downloading Grades to a SpreadsheetMost instructors want to be able to do more advanced calculations on their grades than a simple point average. Currently, the Moodle gradebook does not support curving, weighting, or dropping grades. The only way to perform these calculations is to download the gradebook to a spreadsheet and perform your calculations there. Fortunately, it's easy to download and manipulate the grades into a spreadsheet:
Once you have manipulated the grades in Excel, you will need to communicate the new scores or final grades to students. While there is currently no way to upload a spreadsheet into Moodle, you can share the new scores with students. Simply create a new offline assignment and enter the results from the Excel spreadsheet. |