This page tells you how to access the Moodle Gradebook. Once in there, you can format the Gradebook to suit your marking purposes, view automatically generated marks, manually enter students' marks, and monitor students' progress.
What is the Gradebook?
The Gradebook is where Moodle collects scores for all gradable items from your course, this even includes interactive activities such as forums. Marks are added to the Gradebook either automatically (when marks are provided by an activity such as the Quiz) or manually by yourself.
In the Gradebook you can:
- view and edit marks
- import or manually enter grades for assessments conducted offline
- sort items into folders known as grade categories
- add weightings to grades and calculate totals.
When to use the Gradebook
The Gradebook is important throughout the course creation process, staff can view student grades and students will see their grades in the structure laid out in the Gradebook.
Visit the Gradebook early in the process of course creation. To get a feel for how it works and to set up categories (folders) to put gradable items in throughout your course. If grade categories have already been set up, you will be able to specify, whenever you create a new assessment in the course, which grade category you want the associated grade item to belong to.
Lay out the Gradebook clearly and logically. Once the course starts, as the students complete each assessable activity and you continue to add gradable items, your Gradebook will grow. It's important to have it laid out clearly, in logical categories, so that you can interpret and add to it efficiently.
Visit the Gradebook throughout the semester. To organise or add grading items, update student grades and aggregation methods, view student progress, and direct formative feedback to students who most need it.
Manage Grades
The Grader report is the most commonly used page in the Gradebook and allows staff to:
- View and filter student grades across the whole course.
- Enter marks. Add your own columns and enter marks or override existing marks. What is entered into the Gradebook is what Moodle will take as the student's mark.
- See the student view. See how grades will look from the student's perspective
Click 'Get Started' to view the step-by-step guide
You can further customise the Grader report by selecting Settings > Grade administration > Setup > Grader report. For help, see Change Gradebook Viewing Preferences.
Customise the Gradebook
Customising the Gradebook is extremely beneficial if you know which tools you need to access when viewing the gradebook. Once the course starts, as the students complete each assessable activity and you continue to add grade items, your Gradebook will grow. It's important to have it laid out clearly, in logical categories, so that you can interpret and add to it efficiently.
The main customisations in the gradebook are:
- Group items and add marks. Sum different assessment marks together using a category.
- Clean up the Gradebook by grouping and hiding unmarked items from students using a category.
- Add a new grading column. Add grade item to directly enter marks into. Great for tasks that are conducted outside Moodle, such as participation.
Aggregate Marks with Categories
Grade categories (e.g. Quizzes, Exams, Assignments) are used to organise Grade items like folders and add up to the marks within them into a "Category total". Categories have a hierarchical structure, and can be nested inside additional categories. Categories are useful for a course containing numerous assesable items.
Placing grade items in categories:
- allows you to obtain category totals
- makes it possible to assign weighting to those categories
- makes grading easier
Click 'Get Started' to view the step-by-step guide
Give Grade Item/Category Weightings
Weightings allow categories to add the marks into a category total where some grade items are worth more marks.
Click the following link to view a video about using grade weightings in the Moodle Gradebook.
Click 'Get Started' to view the step-by-step guide
Add an Unmarked Category
All activities in a course that can receive marks will be shown in the Gradebook and cannot be deleted from the gradebook while the activity is in the course. An unmarked category is the main way to group all unneeded grade items and hide them from students.
Click 'Get Started' to view the step-by-step guide
The unmarked category can be hidden to stop students from seeing it. See Hide an Item or Category.
Add a Grade Item
Sometimes you may be required to manually add a grade item to the Gradebook. A grade item is an assessable activity which you want the mark included in a student's grade.
Click 'Get Started' to view the step-by-step guide
Marks can be entered into a grade item via the grader report (see Manage Grades) or from a grade import.
Hide an Item or Category
Hiding grades is generally done to prevent some students in a course knowing their mark before others. Keep the category or item hidden until all the marks have been recorded, and then release them all at once for student viewing. Hiding an item or category in the gradebook will only prevent students from seeing their marks and feedback for that item, whilst hiding a category will stop students from seeing their marks or feedback for any items stored within the category.
Course total is set as hidden by default and instructors are advised NOT to unhide it. This ensures that students do not see their grade until the instructor has finalised the grades and decided to release them. Unlike a Grade item or Grade category, Course total cannot be set to unhide at a specified time (Hidden until), it must be manually shown by the instructor.
Assignment grades can be rendered invisible to students in several ways other than through the Gradebook:
- You can set marking workflow status to anything other than Released.
- Access restrictions (dates, groups, completion or grades on other tasks) can be placed on the assignment and course home page section.
- Visibility can be controlled on the assignment and course home page section.
View the Grading History
The grade history report allows staff to view all grading changes that reached the Gradebook in Moodle.
Click 'Get Started' to view the step-by-step guide
Customise Grade Letters
You may want to adjust the Grade Letters as well as their associated grade ranges for a particular course. The grade item or category will need to be updated to the grade display type "letter" to show letter grades.
Click 'Get Started' to view the step-by-step guide
Advanced Features
The following section provides links to additional resources on advanced features in the gradebook.
Scales. Add and use scales as a marking method in the course.
Outcomes. Build and manage outcomes.
Import grades. Import grades from a structured csv file into grade items in Moodle.
Export grades. Download grades into a csv file.