We're currently thinking about the best way to add summary statistics to the Moodle 1.9 gradebook and would appreciate your comments on the following possible options:
Option 1: A stats popup, similar to the popup in the Moodle 1.8. gradebook (see attachment), for each grade item in the grader report.
Option 2: Additional rows in the grader report for highest and lowest grades, median, mode and standard deviation below the overall average row. A show/hide setting for each row could be added to the grader report preferences, like the current 'Show column averages' setting.
Option 3: A stats report similar to the LSU stats report, but a bit simpler. The LSU stats report may be viewed here: http://test.moodle.org/head/grade/report/stats/index.php?id=2 (username teacher and password testm00dle). It currently has 8 capabilities and 17 report preferences settings.
Please let us know what you think to help us decide the best way of adding summary statistics to the Moodle 1.9 gradebook.
Hi Helen,
Ideally I'd like to combine option three (easily accessible and seamlesslly integrated) with an option or possibility for the teacher to show selected criteria to the students when they view their grades. I'm generally not a huge fan of pop up windows.
Dave
Dave, thanks for your comments. Regarding showing statistics to students, I guess we'd need a separate stats report for students, perhaps with some course settings to show/hide the various statistics.
Hi Helen. Has a student view of summary statistics made it into the imminent 1.9.5 release?
We recently moved from WebCT and many of our teaching staff and students are less than pleased with losing this core functionality. If students were able to receive some combination of summary numerical stats and the beautiful Quiz report Analysis ... wow
We recently moved from WebCT and many of our teaching staff and students are less than pleased with losing this core functionality. If students were able to receive some combination of summary numerical stats and the beautiful Quiz report Analysis ... wow
Helen - I like option 2, just make it an optional part of the grader report. This would in my opinion follow a sort of spreadsheet like dynamic that teachers who use grading programs or spreadsheets are already familiar with so it strikes me as being the most intuitive, natural for the teacher. I think Dave makes a good point about it not being a simple check box. Having the ability to Display to all (students and teachers), Display to teachers, and Do not display would be great. Peace - Anthony
Hi Helen,
Nice idea. Can I vote for option 2. The gradebook is already complex and extra pages might not help. The simple rows with hide/unhide does the job. However, what do we do with very large groups? It's useful to see the stats alongside/near the students' names. This is easy in Excel (split screen). Any chance we could get such a feature here (also copes with large numbers of assignments)?
Paul
Nice idea. Can I vote for option 2. The gradebook is already complex and extra pages might not help. The simple rows with hide/unhide does the job. However, what do we do with very large groups? It's useful to see the stats alongside/near the students' names. This is easy in Excel (split screen). Any chance we could get such a feature here (also copes with large numbers of assignments)?
Paul
Paul, thanks for your comments. Perhaps the 'Students per page' setting in 'My preferences' can be used to make the stats appear nearer students' names. Regarding large numbers of assignments, hopefully our horizontal scrollbar improvement (MDL-18228) will help.
The stats report included in our grade book was written by Daniel Servos for his Google Summer of Code 2008 project. We added a tiny bit to it to make the "inverted" view the default. He's got a REALLY awesome visualization plugin as well that we have included in a few projects.
Robert, thanks for the info. I hadn't realised that Daniel had written the stats report as well as the visual report.
Regarding the visual report, please see MDL-13501. Help in fixing the ActionScript would be appreciated.
Regarding the visual report, please see MDL-13501. Help in fixing the ActionScript would be appreciated.
Thanks to everyone who has commented so far on the different options. More comments would be appreciated! Please find attached screenshot of the stats report (option 3).
May be adding some colors and indentation, so totals would stand out more?
Also adding names of the categories, e.g. "Category total for S2 Assessments"
Also adding names of the categories, e.g. "Category total for S2 Assessments"
This is good and is certainly a needed feature. I spend quite a bit of time looking at grades and test scores, etc, both for my own class and my school, and this is the type of thing that is needed. And I teach math, so students learn to work with summaries.
I would suggest dropping mode unless we hear of people who really want it (not thinking that someone might want it). The reason is that what is the most common grade does not really mean much, but in addition, there is not a universal definition of mode -- like can you have more than one mode, , in most case there is no mode (even thought your sample lists it, etc.
What I might add is Q1 (the 25th percentile) and Q3 (the 75th percentile). While measures of center are important, the spread is also important, and highest/lowest is too sensitive to outliers. But with Q1 and Q3, a box and whiskers diagram can be made, you can look for skew, and you can see where the middle half of your class is in terms of spread.
The long name assignments should probably be truncated to reasonable number of characters.
The current display of "pass" does not seem correct and probably should not displayed if it displays confusing data.
Otherwise, this looks good, and for my vote I would say is superior to a hover display provided that an average continues to be displayed at the bottom of the grade page.
--Gary
I would suggest dropping mode unless we hear of people who really want it (not thinking that someone might want it). The reason is that what is the most common grade does not really mean much, but in addition, there is not a universal definition of mode -- like can you have more than one mode, , in most case there is no mode (even thought your sample lists it, etc.
What I might add is Q1 (the 25th percentile) and Q3 (the 75th percentile). While measures of center are important, the spread is also important, and highest/lowest is too sensitive to outliers. But with Q1 and Q3, a box and whiskers diagram can be made, you can look for skew, and you can see where the middle half of your class is in terms of spread.
The long name assignments should probably be truncated to reasonable number of characters.
The current display of "pass" does not seem correct and probably should not displayed if it displays confusing data.
Otherwise, this looks good, and for my vote I would say is superior to a hover display provided that an average continues to be displayed at the bottom of the grade page.
--Gary
Hi Gary,
I agree with your idea of 'mode'. 'Median' might also qualify on these grounds. What about adding standard deviation?
Cheers,
Paul
I agree with your idea of 'mode'. 'Median' might also qualify on these grounds. What about adding standard deviation?
Cheers,
Paul
Hi Helen,
this stat popup for gradebook would be very very useful. we have faculty that moved over from webct and are looking for this in Moodle.
What is the status of this project? any anticipated release data?
I definitely need the summary statistics. My school requires grading on a curve and summary statistics would help.