If you need an effective solution for grading student coursework on Moodle, then Moodle Gradebook is the answer to your problems!
Moodle Gradebook is a tool for compiling student grades from all assignments during the year. It eliminates the process of creating and maintaining a gradebook while making grades easily accessible to students throughout the term.
Even better, the Moodle Gradebook is very customizable so you can set it up to function exactly how you need it to. This makes it simple to use and saves you from the busywork of a manual gradebook.
We’ll go over what Moodle Gradebook is and its most useful features below so you can decide if it will benefit your grading process!
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What Is Moodle Gradebook?
First, you’ll need to understand what Moodle is.
Moodle is a learning management system that is open-source. This means it can be modified to fit your exact needs. It is used to create websites and develop online courses.
Moodle Gradebook is a grading system designed for use with Moodle courses. Because of this, you’ll need to use Moodle to use Gradebook.
With this in mind, Moodle and Gradebook are particularly useful for teachers that offer online courses and learning. Moodle is free to start and is fairly inexpensive to upgrade. It provides an excellent platform for learning to supplement or replace a physical classroom.
Extrapolating from this, Moodle Gradebook will allow you to easily grade student assignments and display them for students to view. This makes it a powerful tool for keeping students up-to-date with how they’re doing without requiring much effort on your end.
Now we’ll take a look at some of the best features Moodle Gradebook has to offer.
Grade Collection
No gradebook would be complete without grade aggregation. Any coursework that is assigned and graded directly through Moodle will automatically be collected for an overall grade.
You can also manually enter grades for any assignments that are completed outside of Moodle. If you want to use the gradebook as a template and export it to a program like Excel, you can also do that.
While you have the option of determining how assignments are graded, you should note that the only way for aggregation to work is if you grade on a number scale from 0-100. If you use an A-F grading scale, Moodle Gradebook won’t factor those scores into a student’s overall grade.
Other options are available for customization regarding how you grade, but this will require extra setup to keep total grade calculations automated.
Accurate Grades Using Weighted Categories
Another important feature is the ability to create weighted categories.
This becomes particularly important when you have a multitude of assignments that are worth different percentages of a total grade. When you’re using a 0-100 scale, assigning a weight to a specific assignment will make that grade more impactful than another assignment.
There are two ways that you can do this.
First, you can assign weights to individual assignments. This is useful for one-time assignments like major tests. If you have a midterm and final test, then you can assign their weights to each represent 25% of a student’s total grade (or whatever percentage you prefer).
The other way to assign weights is by creating a whole category with several assignments included in it. This is helpful for a coursework like homework and quizzes.
You can create a total category weight (like 10%) and then assign a percentage of that total to each assignment. For example, you could have an assignment worth 20% of the category’s total 10%, meaning each piece of work in that category would be worth 2% of their total grade.
This makes it extremely simple to create accurate grades that reflect the importance of each assignment included.
One last thing to keep in mind is that you can also drop the lowest score or keep the highest score for specific categories. This is great for giving students some minor room for mistakes if you believe in using this practice.
Simple Overview For Students
The best advantage for students that are graded in Moodle Gradebook is the ability to quickly and conveniently see their overall grades.
While Moodle Gradebook is primarily a teacher’s tool, it’s also useful for students. Anyone conscious of their grades will want to know how they’re doing at an exact moment.
With Moodle Gradebook, this provides them with a way of seeing their overall grade in real-time after new coursework is added. They can also see their newest grades on recent assignments.
This adds another level of accountability for students. If they see that they’re underperforming in your class, this can inspire them to step it up or ask for ways to make up for lost points.
This requires you to stay on top of adding new grades, but this will be automated for any assignments completed on Moodle, like quizzes.
Peer Reviews
One final use for Moodle Gradebook is the inclusion of peer reviews for group work.
If you assign any group work throughout the term, peer reviews may be a crucial component of student grading. This allows you to see how well a particular student performed within a group.
You can also identify if anyone failed to contribute towards a group assignment. While Moodle Gradebook will include peer review scores for a total grade, you always have the option of manually altering grades based on feedback received in peer reviews.
As a side note, peer reviews must be made using the Moodle Workshop. Students will enter their submissions in Workshop, which you can then send over to Gradebook once completed.
Closing Thoughts
Moodle Gradebook is an exceptionally useful tool for the Moodle platform. Moodle is an online learning management system that you can use to create and assign coursework to your students.
Gradebook has several useful features, including overall grade aggregation, weighted categories for accurate grades, an easy overview for students, and the ability to include peer review scores.
While you will need Moodle to use Gradebook, there is a free option for it and it’s quite affordable to upgrade to bigger options should you need them. The small cost is well worth the ease it provides for creating online coursework and determining overall grades for students.
Featured image source: Freepik
