TABLE OF CONTENTS

The gradebook in Moodle has many options for how grades will be calculated, so it's important to choose the options that will accurately reflect how students' grades should be calculated in your course. To access your gradebook, choose "Grades" from the menu below the course name. From the drop-down menu on the left side of the page, you can choose "Gradebook Setup" which is where you will choose the options that will govern how your gradebook functions.

The Moodle gradbook with the drop-down menu open to show the option for Gradebook Setup.

Simple Weighted Mean

This is the default grade aggregation at Davidson-Davie. The maximum grade for each assignment/exam/forum is used as the weight and is calculated automatically. Weights are not adjustable using this grading method. Essentially, the higher the value of an assignment/exam/forum, the higher the weight.

  • Click "Edit" in the same line as the course name and choose "Edit Settings" from the box that appearsThe gradebook setup page with the options for editing highlighted.
  • Make sure "Simple weighted mean of grades" is chosen as the aggregation and click "Save Changes".The options for setting up the Moodle gradebook with the aggregation set to "Simple weighted mean of grades".
  • Your setup should now have a "Max grade" column and under "Course total" it should say "Simple weighted mean of grades".The gradebook setup page with the max grade category highlighted.

Weighted Mean

Weighted Mean of Grades allows you to manually enter the weights of every item in the gradebook or to weight categories of grades so that they each account for a certain percentage of the grade.

  • Click "Edit" in the same line as the course name and choose "Edit Settings" from the box that appearsThe gradebook setup page with the options for editing highlighted.
  • Make sure "Weighted mean of grades" is chosen as the aggregation and click "Save Changes".The options for setting up the Moodle gradebook with the aggregation set to "Weighted mean of grades".
  • In your gradebook setup, you should now see boxes where you can enter percentages for your gradebook entries that tells Moodle how each should be weighted. You will also notice that under "Course total" are the words "Weighted mean of grades". The gradebook setup page with boxes for weighted percentages highlighted.

Weighting Categories

  • If you want tests to count a certain percentage of the grade and homework to count a certain percentage of the grade, and so forth, you'll need to create categories and weight those categories with the correct percentages. When you have categories your gradebook setup should have (1) categories which are represented by folder icons, (2) boxes where a percentage can be entered for the category, and (3) a row for the category total. Notice that each category will tell you how it is aggregated as well as the final course total. In the image below, the individual categories use simple weighted mean of grades, but the course as a whole uses weighted mean of grades. The gradebook setup page with numbers pointing out the features of a weighted category aggregation.

Weighting Items within a Category

  • When using Categories, the grade aggregation can be left as Simple Weighted Mean of Grades, which will automatically weight individual items within the category based on the assigned points for each item. However, if you prefer to choose your own weights for each item within each category, change the Category Grade Aggregation to Weighted Mean of Grades by clicking "Edit" in the same row as the Category name and choosing "Edit Settings". Then setting the drop down menu to "Weighted mean of grades".The options for setting up a category's aggregation with "weighted mean of grades" chosen.
  • This will allow you to weight both the category and items within the category. The gradebook setup page with boxes highlighting the category and the items in the category.