Moodle's Assignment activity provides a variety of options for assigning grades to student submissions. When creating an assignment, instructors should configure the settings to match the type of grading they intend to use with the assignment (See "Assignment Grade Settings" below).
Grading Submitted Assignments
Click the Assignment's link on the main course page to get to the main Assignment page. From there, click the "View all submissions" button to see a grading table that displays information about the submissions.
Quick grading
Quick grading allows you to enter numeric grades directly into the grading table, bypassing the more detailed grading interface.
To access the Quick Grading interface, check the box for "Quick grading" in the Options section below the grading table. Other options in this section allow you to set the number of submissions to display per page, filter the display (to see who has not submitted yet, etc.), limit the list to only actively enrolled students, or download submissions as folders (if there are multiple files per student submission).
Important considerations:
- Quick grading is useful for entering multiple scores all on one screen, but for more detailed grading of an individual submission, use the full grading interface instead (see "Grading Individual Submissions" below).
- Quick grading is incompatible with advanced grading methods (Rubrics and Marking Guides).
- Quick grading is not recommended when there are multiple graders assigning grades.
- Do not use "Submission comments" for student feedback. These comments are not part of the grade; they are there to allow students to provide additional information if needed, and to allow the instructor to respond. This is a two-way private conversation between a student and the instructor, and the comments entered here are visible to students immediately. To give a student feedback about their work as part of a grade, use "Feedback comments" instead.
To grade submissions using quick grading, enter grades directly into the grading table, then scroll to the bottom of the grading table and click the "Save all quick grading changes" button.
Grading individual submissions
From the grading table, click the red "Grade" button to view an individual student's submission. On the individual submission screen, the instructor can assess the student submission in a variety of ways, based on how the Assignment settings are configured.
- The left side of the screen 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.
- The right side of the screen 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 here is sent to the Moodle gradebook automatically.
- 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.
- The "Notify students" checkbox determines whether a student will be notified that their submission has been graded (see “Notifying students of graded work” below).
Notifying students of graded work
The "Notify students" checkbox determines whether a student will be notified that their submission has been graded. If you do not want a student to be notified at this time, then uncheck the "Notify students" checkbox before saving. To change the default state of this checkbox, use the "Default setting for 'Notify students'" setting (located in the Notifications section of the Assignment settings).
How students receive Moodle notifications depends on how they have configured their own notification settings.
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 assignment grade until you unhide the grade item, which releases all of them,
- OR, enable "Use marking 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.
Assignment Grade Settings
These settings are displayed when first creating an assignment, or the instructor can manage the settings later from the assignment screen by clicking the admin menu in the upper right, and then selecting "Edit settings."
Grade
This setting determines the overall type of grading for the assignment. The most common selection is "Point," which means to grade the submissions by assigning some number of points.
- None: The assignment is not graded and does not appear in the gradebook.
- Scale: The assignment is graded according to a custom scale created by the instructor. If selected, the instructor can select from existing scales.
- CAUTION: This setting should only be used by experienced Moodle users who understand how Moodle applies custom scales. Instructors should contact DELTA's LearnTech help desk for assistance before trying to use custom scales.
- 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 edit the maximum to some other value.
Grading method
The options available are:
- Simple direct grading: The grader assigns an overall score for each student submission.
- Grading guide: (Advanced grading) 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, locate the horizontal assignment menu on the main Assignment screen, click "Advanced grading" and then select Grading Guide from the dropdown menu.
- Rubric: (Advanced grading) 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, locate the horizontal assignment menu on the main Assignment screen, click "Advanced grading" and then select Rubric from the dropdown menu.
Grade category
This optional setting determines which if any gradebook category the associated grade item will be organized into. This can also be set in the gradebook through the Gradebook Setup screen.
Grade to pass
This optional setting determines the minimum required to be considered a passing grade. The value is used in Moodle's activity completion and course completion features, and in the gradebook, where passing grades are highlighted in green and failing grades are highlighted in red.
Blind grading
This optional setting hides the identities of students from graders. If selected, this setting cannot be changed once there are any submissions or grades.
Hide grader identity from students
This optional setting allows anonymous grading and can be useful if multiple TAs are grading student submissions.
Grading workflow
This optional setting allows for submissions to be assessed in a series of steps; for example, multiple graders can assess the submissions, and then the instructor can approve the scores, and then all grades can be released back to students at the same time.
Use grade allocation
This optional setting is used with grading workflow and allows graders to be allocated to particular students.
Additional Resources
- Grading Quick Guide (MoodleDocs)
- Using Assignment - Grading and Feedback (MoodleDocs)