If you don’t use the Moodle Gradebook, you can stop reading here and just go back to calculating grades with whatever tool you do use. 😉
If you do use the Moodle Gradebook, then you may need to change one very important setting as you finalize your grades.
In Moodle, the default setting for a Gradebook is "Aggregate only non-empty grades." What that means in "non-Moodle-speak" is that the Gradebook ignores all empty cells when calculating grades, giving students a "running total" as the semester progresses. In other words, students see how they are doing in the course up to the present date, based on all the work they have currently submitted. At the end of the semester, you want a true total and not a running total. Otherwise, if you leave that “Aggregate only non-empty grades” checked (but don’t put a value in every grade cell), then students who haven’t submitted work to you are getting a kind of “Get Out of Jail Free” card, since the un-submitted work is not affecting their calculated grade. If at the end of the semester you have students who haven’t submitted work to you, then you have two options to resolve this issue:
- Put a zero (or a 65?) in the Gradebook for all cells that represent un-submitted work, so that every cell in your Gradebook has a value in it; or
- Go to the Gradebook for your course and change the setting so that Moodle itself gives a zero value to un-submitted work.
You can implement Option 1 above by going to the Grader report or the LAE Grader Report, turning editing on for the Gradebook, and entering the appropriate value into empty cells. To implement Option 2:
- Go to the Gradebook for your course, then click on Categories and Items ==> Full view:
- At the top of your grading "spreadsheet," in the middle, click in the "Aggregate only non-empty grades" box to remove the check mark:
- Scroll down to the bottom of your Gradebook page, and click on the “Save changes” button in the middle of the window, just below the Course total line. Moodle will now count empty boxes as zeros.
Please contact us if you have any questions about using the Gradebook in Moodle or about this issue in particular.