Grading concepts

Concept

Description

Grade book

A grade book contains your grading system, grade calculations, grade scheme, grade items, and view and display options. Grade items in your grade book represent all the work that you want to evaluate users on in a course. You can evaluate specific tasks such as assignments, tests, and participation, and you can also create grade items and associate them with course objects such as assignment submissions folders and quizzes.

You must set up a grade book before you can use the Grades tool. As you plan your grade book, consider:

  • What grade items you plan to evaluate.
  • Which grading system is most appropriate for your course.
  • How you will allocate points or weights across grade items.
  • Which grade items you want to associate with course objects. Note that only numeric grade items can be associated with course objects.
  • If you want to include a milestone grade at least once during the course.
  • How you want to calculate final grades.

Making changes to a grade book's settings and calculation options after you begin tracking users' grades can significantly affect existing data.

Grading system

The grading system determines how the grade items in your grade book contribute to users’ final grades. There are three options:

  • Grade items can count as a percentage of a final grade worth 100%.
  • Grade items can be worth a certain amount of points that are totaled for a final grade.
  • You can define a custom formula for how grade items contribute to a final grade.

Grade items

Grade items in your grade book represent all the work that you want to evaluate users on in a course. Grade items can exist independently in your grade book, or you can associate numeric grade items with course objects such as discussions, quizzes, and assignment submissions folders. Each grade item has an entry in the grade book, which you assign a grade to for each user. Depending on the grade item type you want to create, grade items can be graded numerically or based on a grade scheme.

Calculated final grade

The final grade calculated by the grade book. You cannot adjust the final grade without adjusting grade item scores.

Adjusted final grade

You can manually change the final grade calculation without affecting grade item scores.