Grading Assignments in Moodle

Moodle's Assignment activity provides a variety of options for assigning grades to student submissions. These options can be configured to the instructor's preference.

This article provides instructions for using the different grading options available for Moodle Assignments.

Accessing the Submissions Table

When creating an assignment, instructors should configure the settings to match the type of grading they intend to use with the assignment.

To access submissions for grading:

1. Navigate to the Assignment activity.
2. In the Assignment menu at the top of the page, select the Submissions tab.

This will open the Submissions page, where submissions from all users can be viewed.

Quick Grading

Quick grading directly enters grades to the gradebook, bypassing the more detailed grading interface. It's useful for entering multiple scores on one screen. It is incompatible with advanced grading methods, such as Rubrics or Grading guides, and is not recommended with multiple graders.

To enable and use Quick grading:

1. Above the submissions table, enable Quick grading using the checkbox. The page will automatically refresh and reveal empty boxes in the Grade column for each submission's row in the Submissions table.
2. In the Grade column of a submission, enter the score into an empty box.
3. Repeat step 2 for each submission.
4. In the ribbon at the bottom of the page, click the Save button.

The grades will be automatically reported to the gradebook.

Do not use Submission comments for student feedback, as it is not attached to the student's grade and is solely intended for communicating about the submission. Feedback comments should be enabled and used instead.

For more detailed grading of an individual submission, including feedback, use the full grading interface instead.

Configure quick grading

These additional options can be configured to change the submissions table:

• Show X
  • Changes the number of submissions available in each page of the submissions table.
  • Change this field in the ribbon at the bottom of the page using the pop-up menu.
• Search users and Filter by name
  • Filters the submissions in the table based on the student, or the initial letter of the first and last name.
  • Use the Search users field to find a specific student to check.
• Status
  • Filters the submissions in the table based on the state of the submission.
  • For more information on submission states, see the "Overview of Assignment Submission Statuses in Moodle" article.
• Include suspended participants
  • Adds any participants that may have dropped from the course, along with their submissions, if they exist.
  • Enable this option in the Advanced menu above the submissions table.
• Download submissions in folders
  • When bulk downloading files, this option will place each submission in a different folder.
  • Above the submissions table, enable this field using the checkbox.

If other feedback settings like Offline grading worksheet or Feedback files are enabled, the Actions drop-down menu provides options for those actions. To enable those settings, see the "Creating Assignments in Moodle" article.

Using the Individual Grade Menu 

The individual grade menu enables a user to look over a submission in detail and provide a score and feedback.

Accessing the Grade Menu

To access the Grade menu from the main course page:

1. Navigate to the Assignment activity's page.
2. In the Assignment main page, click the Grade button.

To access the Grade menu from the submissions table, click the red Grade button in a student's row to access their individual Grade menu.

Grading Individual Submissions

In the grade menu, the instructor can assess the student submission in a variety of ways, based on how the Assignment settings are configured.

These are the different parts of this view:

• Annotation window (if Annotate PDF is enabled in the Assignment's feedback settings)
  • Displays the student’s file or online text submission as a PDF file that can be annotated directly using the annotation toolbar at the top.
  • Annotation tools include a comment tool for providing inline comments, as well as a pen tool and various other shapes, colors, and stamps.
  • If annotating with comments, instructors can use the Search comments tool to display a list of comments that have been used previously. This helps when the same comment needs to be used repeatedly across multiple students’ submissions.
• Submission menu
  • Displays the submission status, submitted online text (if applicable), submission comments, a field to enter the student’s grade, and an editor window to enter feedback comments.
  • A grade entered in the Grade field is sent to the Moodle gradebook when saving changes.

The size of the left and right panels can be adjusted by dragging the border between them, or by using the controls at the bottom right.

To finish grading a submission, click the Save and show next button at the bottom of the screen.

Notifying students of graded work

The Notify students checkbox determines whether a student will be notified that their submission has been graded.

To keep all assignment grades hidden until all of them have been graded:

• Hide the assignment's grade item in the gradebook.
  • This prevents any students from seeing their score in the gradebook until it's shown again later.
  • For instructions on hiding grade items, see the "Changing the Availability of Grade Items in Moodle" article.
• Enable Use grading workflow in the Assignment's settings.
  • This method might be used when there are multiple graders working separately, but all grades should be released at once.
  • See Moodle's "Assignment settings" documentation for more information.

If a student shouldn't be notified of their grade at time of grading, then disable the Notify students field using the checkbox before saving. Review the "Creating Assignments in Moodle" article for details on how to change the default setting for Notify students.

Assignment Grade Settings

The grade settings for an Assignment are available in the Grade section of the Settings page of the Assignment.

Grade

This setting determines the overall type of grading for the assignment. The most common selection is Point, grading submissions by assigning a number of points out of a maximum.

The options are:

• None
  • The assignment is not graded and does not appear in the gradebook.
  • Feedback can still be applied to the grade item.
• Scale
  • The assignment is graded according to a custom scale created by the instructor.
  • See the "Creating Custom Grading Scale in Moodle" article for instructions on creating a scale.
• Point
  • The assignment is graded according to a range of points.
  • If selected, the instructor can use the default value of 100 for the assignment's maximum score, or can change the maximum score.

Scale and Point both provide a numerical score to the gradebook for a single grade item.

Grading method

There are three options available for grading methods:

• Simple direct grading
  • The grader assigns an overall score for each student submission.
  • Feedback can still be applied, and scales can also be used.
• Grading guide
  • The instructor creates a set of criteria, and then the grader enters a numerical score and a comment for each criterion.
  • To create and configure the grading guide, follow the instructions in the "Using Grading Guides for Assignments in Moodle" article.
• Rubric
  • The instructor creates a rubric with multiple criteria and defines multiple levels of achievement for each criterion, and then when grading, the grader selects the level of achievement for each criterion.
  • To create and configure the rubric, review the instructions in the "Using Rubrics to Grade Assignments in Moodle" article.

A grading method can be changed after the Assignment is created and submissions are made.

Additional Settings

Additional settings are available and can modify the way that the Assignment is graded, especially if using additional graders.

• Grade category
  • This setting determines which gradebook category grade item created for the Assignment will be placed in.
  • This can also be set in the gradebook by following the instructions in the "Rearranging Grade Items in Moodle's Gradebook" article.
• Grade to pass
  • This setting determines the minimum required score considered a passing grade.
  • This value is used in Moodle's activity completion and course completion features. Additionally, in the gradebook, passing grades are highlighted in green and failing grades are highlighted in red.
• Blind grading
  • This setting hides the identities of students from graders.
  • If selected, this setting cannot be changed once there are any submissions or grades.
• Anonymous submissions
  • This hides the identity of the student from the grader. After students make a submission, this cannot be disabled.
  • The identities of each student can be revealed by the instructor in the Submissions page.
• Hide grader identity from students
  • This setting allows anonymous grading and can be useful if multiple TAs are grading student submissions.
• Grading workflow
  • This setting allows for submissions to be assessed in a series of steps.
  • See Moodle's "Assignment settings" documentation for more information.
• Use grade allocation
  • This setting is used with grading workflow and allows graders to be allocated to particular students.

For more information on customizing Assignment grading, see Moodle's "Using Assignment" documentation.

Additional Resources

Grading Quick Guide (MoodleDocs)

For additional assistance, please contact the LearnTech Help Desk at learntech@ncsu.edu, (919) 513-7094, or via the Get Help form on the DELTA Knowledge Base.