As an instructor or student, grading and grades are important. Grades are important for many reasons; educational and professional opportunities are two major uses for them. Grades can at best motivate us to work harder, at worst, make us give up. However, what is important to most students and instructors is the ability to see where they stand in relation to others in the class and where they stand in relation to the course standards.
We have been looking at testing, question creation, and setting up tests up to this point, but we have not really talked about how to grade in Moodle or how teachers and students can view their results. We have looked at how scores for Workshops, Lessons, and Quizzes are calculated and how to enter them, but we have not looked at the output and how the results are shown. In this chapter, we will look at Moodle's answer to the old, hard-covered, neatly lined and divided teacher's Gradebook. In this chapter, we will:
- Learn about Gradebook
- Create grade categories
- Create grade items
- Set up a complete Gradebook
In short, Gradebook allows teachers and students to view grades on all assignments submitted and graded. For many types of quizzes and tests, this is automatic and grades are usually available for viewing immediately.
Workshop is one example of where this is typically not true. Gradebook can be of great use to instructors and students, but it will not do everything for you; it will not automatically grade everything, stop mistakes from happening, make students use it, or replace hardcopies of work. What it can do is help you with your grading and grade organization, allow you and your students quick and detailed access to grades, allow you to give feedback to students based on their scores, allow a quick review of students' or an entire class's grades to spot problems, and generally make grading a bit easier.
Gradebook can be used in several ways, but to get the most use out of it, we need to understand the basic options available and how they work.