This page collects helpful tips and tricks related to commonly asked questions about Moodle.

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Grades and the Gradebook

• How can I create an extra credit assignment in Moodle?

Option 1 – An assignment to add points to an existing grade category:

1. To create the item, go to the grade book and click the "Categories and Items" tab at the top.
2. Find the category that will contain the assignment and set it to "Sum of grades" aggregation. This required in order for this option to work.
3. Scoll down to the very bottom of the page and click "Add grade item".
4. Fill out the new grade item and place it in the proper category.
5. After returning to the Categories and Items page, check the "Extra credit" box for the new assignment.
6. Click "Save changes" at the bottom.

Option 2 – An assignment to add points to an overall course total when using Weighted Mean aggregation for the course:

1. To create the item, go to the grade book and click the "Categories and Items" tab at the top.
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click "Add grade item".
3. Fill out the new grade item and place it in the "root level" of the grade book, not inside any category. There is no extra credit check box as in Option 1.
4. You will now need to customize how the students' final grades are calculated:
   1. In the Course Total row at the bottom, click the (calculator) icon to open the calculation properties for the Course Total.
   2. First, in the "ID Numbers" section of the calculation page, enter a one-word descripton in the box next to the Category Total for each category. Don't worry about adding ID numbers to the individual items within the categories.
      • Also add an ID to any other grade item that is not part of a category, including the new extra credit assignment.
      • Click "Add ID numbers" to save the new ID numbers you entered.
5. In the calculation box at the top, type in the custom calculation that will incorporate the new extra credit assignment. For example, type in the following (without the line break):
   
   =SUM([[Discussions]]*.20,[[Quizzes]]*.30,[[Assignments]]*.20,
   [[Papers]]*.30,[[extra_credit]])
   
   This formula sums up all the categories (after they've been weighted) and then tacks on any points earned in the extra credit assignment.
6. Click "Save changes" to return to the Categories and Items page. That's it!
   

• How do I input extra credit amounts into the grade book?

1) Go to the grade book and make sure you're in the "Grader report" view (this is the default)
2) Find the column for the extra credit assignment and double click in the student's row.
3) Enter the appropriate grade and press "Return" or "Enter".

• How do I add extra points above the maximum grade for regular assignment?

Go to the assignment in Moodle and navigate to the student's grade. Click on the cell to reveal the text area and then manually change the point total in the grade for the student to the desired amount. Press "Return" or "Enter". If you receive an error message that the entered grade is higher than the allowable maximum, you'll need to first click the "Turn editing on" button and re-enter the new grade. Be sure to click the "Update" button to save the new grade.

Quizzes and Tests

• What are the basics of building Moodle quizzes?

A Moodle quiz is just a collection of questions. Each course has a default question pool that questions are automatically added to, and from the pool quizzes are formed. Although you can create questions while you are creating a quiz, keep in mind that your questions are actually becoming part of a pool that can be used in other quizzes in the course.

• What does "Default mark" mean when I'm creating a question?

Because each question is really an independent entity, Moodle lets you assign a “default mark” (default point value) to each question.  The default point value is 1, but you can change the value in the Default mark field.

When you add a question to a new quiz, that default mark is used as the point value for that question in that quiz.  However, once the question is in a quiz, you can still change the point value of that question within that quiz.

• How do I specify how much a quiz is worth?

You don't specify it, at least not initially. The final point value of a quiz is determined by a combination of two things:

1) The sum of the point values of all the questions, called the "Total of grades". A quiz with 10 questions that each have a default mark of "1" will have a Total of grades of 10 points.

2) The "Maximum grade" of the quiz, which can be different than the Total of grades.

The final score that is entered into the grade book is calculated as the percentage correct of the Total of grades multiplied by the Maximum grade. For example:

Total of grades = 53 (perhaps there are 53 questions, each worth one point)
Number correct = 49 (the student correctly answered 49 of the 53 questions)
Percentage correct = .9245 (49/53)
Maximum grade = 100 (the default, but see below on how to change this)
Final grade in gradebook = 92.45 (100 x .9245)

• How do I change the point value of a question or of the whole quiz?

To change the value of a question within a particular quiz, or to change the maximum points of a quiz, click “Edit quiz” in the left-hand navigation. You arrive at the list of questions and a way to change the value for any questionas it appears in that quiz. Next to each question is a text field where you can enter a point value for the question in the current quiz (click “Save”).  Now look at the top of the list, where it says in bold Editing quiz: <name of quiz>. The “Total of grades” displays the current sum of all the point values for the questions, so when you change the point value for a question and click “Save” the new sum is reflected in the “Total of grades”.

The text field immediately below that (“Maximum grade”) is where you can enter a custom maximum grade. If you leave it set to 100, Moodle will do the math to proportionally calculate the student’s actual score on the quiz. In other words, 29/29 would result in 100 points in the grade book. 28/29 would result in 96.5 points in the grade book, and so on. If you really want the quiz to be “worth” 29 points, change the Maximum grade to “29” and click “Save”.  That’s all you have to do. Or, if you change the values of individual questions so that the “total of grades” is greater than 29, you might consider changing the Maximum grade to match the new total. Basically it doesn’t matter if the “total of grades” and the “maximum grade” are not the same. Some percentage of the Maximum grade is what will be entered into the gradebook, and Moodle will use the Total of grades as part of its calculations.

See this Moodle forum discussion for another explanation.

• How do I reset a student's quiz attempt so they can take the quiz again if necessary?

1) Go to the quiz and click "View xxx entries" to view the current grades for the quiz.
2) In the list of students and attempts, check the box next to the student in question.
3) Scroll down to the bottom of the list and click the button "Delete selected attempts".

If the quiz is still available to your students, the student in question will be able to re-enter the quiz and take it again. However, if you configured a specific date range for the quiz's availability, you will need adjust those dates using the "Edit settings" link for the quiz. Note: Even though the quiz will be visible to the other students in the class, Moodle will not let them retake the quiz if the quiz settings only allow one attempt.

||||||| Updated: 3/21/12