Moodle in English: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Michael Skwara - Thursday, February 26, 2009, 7:36 AM

In response to Helen's request for input on new features, I would like to make a case for an option to include extra credit assignments that allow student's course or category totals to exceed 100%. Basically, this is an extra credit assignment where any points earned are added to the student’s total points earned for the course or category, but the total possible points in the course or category is not increased. This is not currently a feature in Moodle. In my experience, this type of extra credit is very common in American secondary and post-secondary education and is a high priority for our faculty. If you would also like to be able to include extra credit assignments of this type, please vote for this issue in the tracker: http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-12380

For many of us who are in environments where this type of extra credit is widely used this is an essential feature. In my search for a solution to this I have seen quite a few similar posts on “how do I do extra credit?” I think because this concept is so pervasive in our environment, many users assume that there is already a way to accomplish this and that they just haven’t figured out how to use it. However, it isn’t currently a feature at all.

Additionally, I suspect that many of us in environments where extra credit needs to be used would like to see such a feature compatible with the "simple weighted mean of grades" aggregation strategy so that instructors would have the ability to use extra credit AND show students an accurate "running total" through the "aggregate only non-empty grades" option. Some discussion on this has already taken place here: http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-12942

Extra credit: what is the underlying mathematical structure?

by Tim Hunt - Thursday, February 26, 2009, 12:06 PM

Every time the Extra Credit thing comes up, the mathematician in me wants to know what is really going on. However, I have not yet made the time to sit down and try to work it out.

Actually, I am not even sure I know mathematical structure that ordinary grades from. You might define:

A grade G is a pair of numbers $$(g, g_{max}) \in \mathbb{R}^2$$ with $$0 \le g \le g_{max}$$.

And then you can rigorously define various operations like add, scale, ... on them in a fairly natural way.

Or would it work out more neatly with the definition

A grade G is a pair of numbers $$(p, g_{max}) \in \mathbb{R}^2$$ with $$0 \le p \le 1$$ and $$0 \le g_{max}$$. (That is, work more directly with the percentage grade. The two are virtually equivalent, you would probably need to try both to decide which was nicer.)

Anyway, neither of these definitions lead to a Vector space, Ring or other algebraic structure I remember from my maths degree.

But for extra credit, I don't even know what the right definition would be - perhaps because I did not grow up in the extra credit culture, as you can tell from that fact I call it maths, not math.

Any other maths geeks here who want to debate this?

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Mike Worth - Thursday, February 26, 2009, 6:09 PM

Even if all that maths(yes, I can shorten mathematics properly too) scares you, can you explain how it works?

I've never understood how you can get more than 100% (or equally get 100% even though you got some of the questions wrong). Is this just some silly way to make people feel better that they got a high % rather than just saying that a lower % is a good mark?

Thanks,
Mike

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Thomas Brown - Friday, February 27, 2009, 1:00 AM

"I've never understood how you can get more than 100% (or equally get 100% even though you got some of the questions wrong). Is this just some silly way to make people feel better that they got a high % rather than just saying that a lower % is a good mark?"

If I make a curve set from less than the class high score, then the outliers at the top will have more than 100%.

For example, if the high score is 99, but the rest of the As are clustered around 92, then I might curve down from 92, treating 92 as a perfect score. My outlier student at 99 would then have a result higher than 100%.

The rationale for this approach is that I do not assume that my teaching or assessment is perfect. If students cannot score 100%, it might be because I presented it imperfectly, or because my assessment does not accurately measure their grasp of the material.

To deal with this problem, I assume that the best students are reflecting my best teaching and assessment, and curve down from them. However, sometimes you have an outlier who outperforms everyone else in the class significantly. Sometimes, I assume this is random, and disregard that score when setting the curve.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Michael Skwara - Saturday, February 28, 2009, 6:04 AM

Basically, the extra credit assignment is an optional assignment where the numerator (points earned) is added to the course total of points earned, but the denominator (points possible) is not added to the course total points possible. This allows an instructor to give students the option to do extra work by completing the extra credit assignment to make up for poor performance in other assignments, but does not penalize students who choose not to complete the optional extra credit assignment.

Here is an example of possible outcomes from three different students in the same course: There are four 25 point assignments and one 5 point extra credit assignment.

Student A:

A1: 24/25 + A2: 23/25 + A3: 20/25 + A4: 22/25 + Extra Credit: 5 (student completed extra credit assignment) = 94/100

Student B:

A1: 21/25 + A 2: 23/25 + A3: 22/25 + A 4: 19/25 + Extra Credit: 0 (student did not attempt extra credit) = 85/100

Student C:

A1: 23/25 + A2: 25/25 + A3: 24/25 + A4: 24/25 + Extra Credit: 5 (student completed extra credit assignment) = 101/100

The case of Student C, where a student has done well on all assignments and completes extra credit, earning a course total score above 100% is a relatively rare, but it does occur.

I know it must seem strange if you’ve never seen the concept before. It is a pretty standard element in American secondary and post-secondary education.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Nicolas Connault - Saturday, February 28, 2009, 4:28 PM

This feature is already available in 1.9. The only difference is that the grade is capped at the maximum, it cannot go over it. This fulfills the requirement of helping people who didn't do so well. Is the other requirement to help the other students feel extra good about themselves for doing well?

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Robert Russo - Sunday, March 1, 2009, 12:27 AM

We had exactly the same logical argument with our faculty...and we lost. Apparently, the big issues are motivation, and class ranking, and inspiring greater competition. If you have a few students at the top of a very competitive class, instructors want the option of having grades go over the max.

When we implemented these changes, student support questions about their grades drastically dropped. So the occurence is not as rare as we would like to believe.

The biggest argument however, was that if we implemented the feature, and it didn't come in to play, no one would notice or care. But if we didn't, and it was needed, there would be support calls about it. Compared with our statistical data detailing the number of support calls about "my grade is capped at 100", it was obvios that they were correct.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Nicolas Connault - Sunday, March 1, 2009, 1:24 AM

But your grades are not capped at 100!! You can set your course total to any maximum you want, and tell your students that they are percentages. You could even hack the grader and user reports so that the Real display of grades are appended with a % symbol. This would certainly give the impression of having grades over the maximum. Compared with the nightmare involved with implementing, aggregating and maintaining grades over 100%, I really think this compromise is more than acceptable.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Robert Russo - Monday, March 2, 2009, 2:22 AM

But unless you allow grades to to over the maximum, aggregation will be incorrect.

The way it boiled down was this: there were a handful of us who believed percents above 100 did not make sense, and a committee representing our 1900 faculty who wanted grades above max and percents above 100 to happen.

The feature being there does not affect those who do not take advantage of it, but if it were missing, those who would make use of it are out of luck.

Mathematically, 100% is all, everything, the whole shebang. But even some of our mathematics instructors wanted this feature.

I agree that using calculations and some report hacks, you can simulate grades over 100%, but less (far less) than 1% of our faculty correctly coaxed calculations to calculate anything remotely close to reality. So instead of asking all of our faculty to change their way of thinking and working, we adapted Moodle to fit their needs.

Having these features (grades above max and percents above 100) in Moodle make it unique and special among other learning management systems.

BTW, great discussion. It's very hard for me to argue with you as I believe exactly as you do, but ultimately this is a tool to ease teaching and learning. Therefore the faculty and students won out.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Nicolas Connault - Monday, March 2, 2009, 3:32 AM

Frustrating

Well, maybe it should be a patch in contrib then. I think this grades over 100% approach is poor pedagogy and a bad habit, and I find it aberrant to change the core of Moodle to accommodate for it.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Martin Dougiamas - Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 3:13 PM

Well, I don't think this is a good response to this problem, Nicolas.

Moodle is supposed to support what teachers need and in this case the feature seems justified by this alone.

We just need to work out the best way to allow grades over 100% to be entered everywhere. It's not rocket science. If aggregates and calculations go wierd sometimes then so be it.

What *exactly* would be the problems if we removed the "rounding to max grade" on input and output?

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Michael Penney - Sunday, March 1, 2009, 1:32 AM

We also had this argument/discussion/collaboration - which is why extra credit was in the 1.5 gradebook. Many many many non-mathematics faculty wanted it. Jeff Graham, the mathematician/programmer who did a good deal of the 1.5 gradebook code work (based on requirements I worked with faculty in multiple disciplines to develop), had bruises on his forehead from banging his head against the wall.

However, it was a feature that non-math faculty liked a great deal, and there are many faculty that category.

The lesson I took from it was: "it's easier to argue with a mathematician with the rest of the world on your side than it is to argue against the rest of the world with a mathematician on your side."

YMMV

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Petr Skoda - Sunday, March 1, 2009, 3:25 AM

Does any other country except US or Canada have this problem of wanting course grade to go over the maximum value?

I did a little research and so far I did not find anybody from other countries requesting this feature, hmmm.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Michael Penney - Sunday, March 1, 2009, 5:17 AM

That will be interesting to see, with 11813 of the 50411 registered sites being in US and Canada, there are many folks here from North America asking for features

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Ralf Hilgenstock - Sunday, March 1, 2009, 8:06 PM

Hi Petr,

yes we had such requests in past time.

Example: student has three tasks. A task is a quiz or assignment. Each task has 12 parts. The student needs 10 correct parts to get 100 %. If he gets 120 % he can compensate a 30% in an other tasks.

It may be possible to arrange this in an otherway with gradebook, but mostly we will lose motivation by overfulfilling the requirements.

By the way we had several requests about negative scoring and deduction from existing points or MC-questions (multianswer type) which only gives a point if all options are correct. (i.e. example German test system for driving licences). But this is an other topic.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Petr Skoda - Sunday, March 1, 2009, 9:13 PM

Hi Ralph,
I was asking specifically "course grade to go over the maximum value", I suppose your example is related to category grade only, right?

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Robert Russo - Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 10:37 PM

We've had a few inquiries about negative scoring (both on quizzes and in the grade-book) and we have avoided dealing with the issue thus far.

As things settle down here and we catch up with all the other (higher priority) requests, I'm sure we will have to revisit it.

Some of our faculty want to be able to give a negative grade to certain answers.
Some want to be able to give negative grades for manually grade items.
Some want negative extra credit.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Nicolas Connault - Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 11:49 PM

LOL you may want to revisit the wording of that last idea: "Negative extra credit" :D

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Robert Russo - Thursday, March 5, 2009, 3:57 AM

That idea makes me sick. Totally.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Robert Russo - Thursday, March 5, 2009, 3:58 AM

BTW are you going to the San Francisco MoodleMoot?

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Helen Foster - Monday, March 2, 2009, 9:47 PM

Thanks everyone for this interesting and useful discussion. approve

I remember from studying then later teaching A level Maths in the UK, that it was possible to achieve up to 115%. There were various reasons given for this, as mentioned by others in this discussion.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Robert Russo - Monday, March 2, 2009, 10:29 PM

--"it's easier to argue with a mathematician with the rest of the world on your side than it is to argue against the rest of the world with a mathematician on your side."

Brilliant!

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Bob Puffer - Monday, March 2, 2009, 11:30 PM

I'd be interested in weighing the disadvantages of having grades above 100% (other than the philosophical/ pedgagogical mentioned so far). Are there practical disadvantages aside from it being difficult to implement in core (though LSU's report works perfectly)? For our school and the consortium of liberal arts schools with which I'm in contact in the US, we would need to continually hack the core or re-argue and re-argue the logical points stated above to no avail. For a gradebook that is well known for its flexibility toward many, many grading methodologies, sticking on this important point seems contradictory.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Suzanne Faber - Friday, March 6, 2009, 1:20 AM

We use extra credit to allow over 100% within a category, however the final grade does not go over 100%. This allows a student to improve the final grade in case they did poorly in one category. For example, if we have 3 categories (Exams, Reading, Papers) a student could do poorly in exams, however since they did extra credit in the papers category (usually this is doing extra assignments) they are able to bring up their final grade. This gives a student who may be a poor test taker an opportunity to show they know the material and earn some points that would make a difference between a C+ and a B-

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Petr Skoda - Friday, March 6, 2009, 3:27 AM

Hi Suzanne,
you do not need grades >100% for this, you can aggregate through the three subcategories and you will get similar result

You are in fact describing average of all grades from all the categories, we have a special switch that tells the gradebook to aggregate all grades in all subcategories excluding category items - This works even with extra credits :-O

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Suzanne Faber - Friday, March 6, 2009, 11:27 PM

Petr,
Can you please explain how to do this or point me to a place where it is described. We have tried numerous times to get this function to work and it has not done so. Let me give you a more specific example of how we set up our gradebook.

We set the parent category to weighted mean of grades
Each category has a different weight, and is set to mean of grades.

This does not allow for an assignment to reach a score over 100% or the category to reach over 100%. We have tried different options and every time we do that it does not work or does the math differently than we would like.

The extra credit we use often is found within an assignment or a category. It is not a separate category of its own.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Nicolas Connault - Saturday, March 7, 2009, 12:20 AM

Getting more than 100% on an assignment is not possible, and probably never will. The current discussion is about allowing more than 100% on the course category total, and maybe on category totals, but not for individual assignments.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Gary Anderson - Saturday, March 7, 2009, 3:49 AM

Nicholas:

This discussion is not only about category totals.

It is correct to say that Moodle-core does not currently support activities (like assignments) going over 100%. However, the solutions I have put in the tracker and the LSU gradebook modifications do allow activities to go over 100%. It is true that without additional modification to the modules, you have to enter these scores directly in the gradebook, but many of us have modified the modules to do this as well (and will let us put in non-integer values, etc as well).

Frankly, it is only because you and Petr don't like the idea of extra credit, and enforce it by converting all grades over 100% to the maximum grade, that teachers can't choose to exceed the limit.

When I tell the children I teach that they can add up to 5% to their grade by doing some optional problems (whether it is an additional activity or part of a scored activity), they know precisely how that will affect the computation of their grade -- and if they have 98% without the extra credit, they can have 103% with it. Still an A when it gets put on their transcript, but there are still several motivating reasons why we might choose to have such a feature in the way we assign grades.

We have gone through the iterative development process of implementing this in actual courses, and none of the technical or practical or user-interface barriers that have been suggested are really there -- and we have done our best to anticipate future and non-standard uses that we don't currently utilize.

I'm sorry if this all sounds harsh, it is just really frustrating to me when teachers are being prevented from easily doing what they want for what does not seem to me to be any good reason.

--Gary

Re: Suszanne's question

by Gary Anderson - Saturday, March 7, 2009, 6:55 AM

Suszanne:

May I suggest that you move this specific question to a separate thread in this forum so we can help you resolve your problem? As you can tell, this thread is trying get at the question of whether extra credit should be expanded in Moodle, and I am afraid that getting a more immediate answer to your question might get lost in that.

While doing so, I would suggest the following:
1. Go through my tutorial at http://docs.moodle.org/en/Gradebook_1.9_Tutorial. It will make sure that you now how to set up weighted gradebooks correctly.
2. Consider whether you really want to use "mean of grades" as your way of summarizing a category. For example, do you really want 50 point assignments in a category to be worth as much as a 10 point assignment?
3. Consider using "sum of grades" instead which does have limited extra-credit support. You can always display this method as percentages which may get you closer to what you want.

--Gary

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Robert Russo - Thursday, February 26, 2009, 11:11 PM

Our gradebook (http://cvs.moodle.org/contrib/patches/LSU_gradebook/) allows for grades above the maximum grade (up to 2X), grades above the 100% (up to 200%), assignment grades up to 500pts, and extra credit in SUM, Weighted Mean, and Simple Weighted Mean.

Weighted mean

Each grade item can be given a weight, which is then used in the arithmetic mean aggregation to influence the importance of each item in the overall mean.
Each grade within a category (or a category total within a parent) is normalized to a decimal value based on the quotient between the points earned and the maximum ensuring that weights are calculated appropriately. Grades up to 2X the maximum can be entered resulting in grades up to 200%. Extra credit grade items are tacked on after category calculation has taken place.
A1 70/100 weight 10, A2 20/80 weight 5, A3 10/10 weight 3, category max 100, and one extra credit item worth 5/10:

(0.7*10 + 0.25*5 + 1.0*3)/18 = (0.625)*100 --> 62.5 + 5 = 67.5pts OR 67.5%

Simple weighted mean

The difference from Weighted mean is that weight is calculated as Maximum grade - Minimum grade for each item. 100 point assignment has weight 100, 10 point assignment has weight 10. Grades up to 2X the maximum can be entered resulting in grades up to 200%.
This is the mean that most instructors are used to.
A1 70/100, A2 20/80, A3 10/10, category max 100, and one extra credit item worth 5/10:

(0.7*100 + 0.25*80 + 1.0*10)/190 = (0.526*100) --> 52.6 + 5 = 57.6pts OR 57.6%

Sum of grades

The sum of all grade values. Scale grades are ignored. This is the only type that does not convert the grades to percentages internally (normalization). The Maximum grade of associated category item is calculated automatically as a sum of maximums from all aggregated items. Grades up to 2X the maximum can be entered resulting in grades up to 200%.
Keep highest and drop lowest values are not calculated using this aggregation method for obvious reasons.
A1 70/100, A2 20/80, A3 10/10, and one extra credit item worth 5/10:

70 + 20 + 10 = 100 + 5 --> 105pts OR (105/190) = 55.3%

Please be aware that extra credit is added to the REAL point total of it's given category after all other calculations have taken place. The conversion to percentages happens AFTER extra credit has been added. Extra credit is NOT normalized in any way, simply added to the category point total and before percentages are calculated.

Sorry if my maths skills aren't up to Tim's.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Gary Anderson - Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 12:08 PM

Michael:

I certainly agree with you on this, and I was disappointed when the feature that was in previous versions of Moodle (and was being used) was dropped in 1.9. Of course, I just patched it when 1.9 was in Beta and reported the problem and solution in the tracker for both types of extra credit(extra points and optional activities), but I lost the argument to the core developers of the gradebook at the time.

As a math teacher, my students certainly know how to do computations where percentages are over 100%. For example, a budget can go over 100%, and while that might be a problem for the budget, it is not a computational issue. 100% in terms of grades simply represents perfect or maximum scores or full credit on all REQUIRED course work. But sometimes as teachers we choose to allow for additional optional work or points on an activity, perhaps to offer extra challenge or to given an opportunity for students to recover from a slow start, etc. We want this effort to be factored into the assessment of student performance, and we call this factor "extra credit". That it sometimes causes a grade to exceed 100% has never caused me any angst.

That we would make teachers or sites jump through a whole bunch of hoops or change their frame of thinking to incorporate this feature in their courses, however, does disappoint me. Of course, it does not effect schools like mine where we can just customize the code, but most institutions at least don't start out this way, which makes this an important issue.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Elena Ivanova - Wednesday, March 4, 2009, 1:17 PM

I agree with both Michael, Gary, and the rest of the folks that it would be beneficial to make the gradebook flexible enough to go over 100% if needed, as well as having a unique grade to go over 100 points easily.
This can be defined on the admin level for the installation.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Petr Skoda - Thursday, March 5, 2009, 4:54 AM

I do not really understand why people requesting this "over 100% option" think that everybody around the world needs it and wants it exactly this way. Did it occur to you that other people did not like the old pre 1.9 gradebook calculations at all? Looks like the old gradebook was hardcoded to fit US universities, but that is not everybody. Some may say that it is a regression yet others view it as a fixed bug (including myself).

There are several possible solutions:

add new grade item options which would allow over 100% in selected grade items - the problem here is UI clutter
add new hidden option use "US extra credit grading" - the problem is that it affects all calculations and it would not be recommended to switch it on the fly because it might change all grades and requires a lot of resources for grade recalculation
allow grades over 100% unconditionally - this is definitely not acceptable and would be a step backwards for many ppl outside US

Coding and patches are not the main problem - somebody has to step up (or pay core developers) and support the solution in the long term which means testing in all new branches, diagnosing gradebook bugs, fixing regressions, writing docs and answering questions here on moodle.org.

In any case thanks everybody for patches, testing and especially new ideas.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Bob Puffer - Thursday, March 5, 2009, 5:22 AM

I hear what you're saying, Petr... but so far, I don't hear anyone else saying it. If my objective was to build a gradebook flexible enough to handle most common gradebook situations and not leave out 20% of the registered Moodle users, I would happily provide the necessary code to make my product that much better. IMHO. Unless of course, there's a clear reason why the ability to exceed 100% causes harm to more than just an academic philosophy. Perhaps that's the real question?

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Robert Russo - Thursday, March 5, 2009, 5:48 AM

We could always make it an instructor's personal preference for grades and percentages to exceed their maximum/100%. Making it per item would be overkill.

We were speaking of this yesterday, and It should not be a big deal. It could be in the grade-book settings and the administrator could make it advanced or force it either way.

If this is still a problem, there might me something more to this debate than meets the eye.

In building all these new features, we set out to give our faculty what they needed to make Moodle more useful to them and ease the pain of conversion from Semester Book (in house LMS) and BlackBoard.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Nicolas Connault - Thursday, March 5, 2009, 6:41 AM

You don't seem to understand that this features requires major changes in how the grades are stored and calculated. It would be completely impossible to make it an instructor preference, because it would mean that grades could go over 100% for one instructor but not for another, although they may both be viewing the same gradebook.

If this is ever implemented, IMO it will have to be a course-wide setting, affecting all users of a course.

I will get together with Petr to try to put together a document explaining the main difficulties with this features, in layman's terms if possible.

In any case, the philosophy aspect annoys me, but from a coder's point of view it's the least of our worries ;)

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Robert Russo - Thursday, March 5, 2009, 11:12 PM

I understand the dilemma about multiple instructors with multiple preferences, maybe it would be a better idea to tie this to a course.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Petr Skoda - Thursday, March 5, 2009, 7:52 AM

I have to repeat myself - this is not about providing code, this is about UI issues, code maintenance and supporting of users. Talking about percentages, I personally prefer the code to be suitable for 80% instead 20% only. Satisfying 100% would feel much better of course, unfortunately it was not possible to implement all this before the database freeze during the 1.9dev phase.

I have a few questions that need to be answered:

1/ How to deal with letter grades and scales when using >100% grades? How are we going to visualise it in gradebook reports?

2/ What is the real "correct" maximum for >100% grades - is it 200% or 300% or 110%, this value is important because it affects the total grade in some cases

3/ How are we going to tell if teacher entered incorrect value or just wanted to give >100%

4/ How to deal with letter/scale grades >100% in gradebook exports and imports?

5/ Does it make sense to support <0% grades?

One feasible solution I see is to add a new field into grade_item table - maxgradecutoff for example and store some percentage (>1.0) float value in it. Also somebody must solve somehow the user interface problems above. This is not possible in 1.9.x because no db changes are allowed. I suppose only global switch is possible in 1.9x, because there is no room for this info in gradebook db tables.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Robert Russo - Thursday, March 5, 2009, 11:28 PM

1/ How to deal with letter grades and scales when using >100% grades? How are we going to visualise it in gradebook reports?

Letter grades are based on the minimum necessary to achieve a grade, therefore, if a 92% is the minimum necessary for an A, then 122% is above that and qualifies for an A.
This is how it works in our system.

2/ What is the real "correct" maximum for >100% grades - is it 200% or 300% or 110%, this value is important because it affects the total grade in some cases

We set ours at a hardcoded multiplier of 2X, so 200% and double the maximum. This could trivially become an administrator (less trivially for courses) preference (setting to 1 disables overgrading).

3/ How are we going to tell if teacher entered incorrect value or just wanted to give >100%

How do we know they weren't one person off when entering grades? You can't check for carelessness.

4/ How to deal with letter/scale grades >100% in gradebook exports and imports?

All grades function as they normally do, except now you have the ability to go over the maximum, and therefore 100%.
Exports of grades above the max and 100% function as they should.
Imports of grades above the max and above 100% behave as they should as well.

We have already solved these issues in our current implementation and have released the code on Moodle's CVS. We have been using this on a large scale installation (30,000 students and 1900 faculty with over 13,000 unique logins per day) for almost a year.

We have some upgrade problems to iron out as well as some more simplification to do.

5/ Does it make sense to support <0% grades?

Makes absolutely NO sense to me, but some faculty want this.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Martin Dougiamas - Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 3:19 PM

Thanks very much, Robert.

To me these sound like reasonable answers ... I still can't see any problems with allowing "overgrading".

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Petr Skoda - Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 7:41 PM

There is a new patch in tracker, I hope that will finally satisfy everybody. Nicolas will tell you more about how it works and you can already test it on the test site. I am going to continue with some other hacking now, ciao.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Bob Puffer - Thursday, March 5, 2009, 11:40 PM

Is the code suitable for 80%? The assertion is that US schools are the only ones to benefit from this and I'd like to know if that is indeed factual? I just don't have enough information and there's not been much chiming in from non-US schools saying the Moodle core gradebook is the "Cat's pajamas" (US colloquialism).

From our own experience, we have never been able to use the Moodle core gradebook. Initially we developed our own. Humboldt picked it up and took it miles further to become GBv2. We were forced to discard that upon moving to 1.9 but the term we used the Moodle core gradebook was so miserable we couldn't go another term and patched with LSU's. Tons of feedback tell me that LSU's patch has been entirely successful... hardly a day goes by without comments on how much easier it is to use and some of those comments include appreciation for final grades being able to exceed 100%.

Nicolas and others have picked up the gauntlet and really made significant changes to the Moodle core gradebook. Commendations all around for turning a pig's ear into a silk purse (US coll.).

Still... I can easily see a forked gradebook coming out of these discussions. Our group is using a Moodle-Liberal Arts Edition which includes the LSU patch and other patches for which we've waited since 1.3. I think that would be a pity since the gradebook team has done wonderful work on the parts undertaken (wish we could limit aggrevation methods to three -- just my rant).

None of the questions you propose, Petr come up when we are using the LSU patched gradebook -- it just works. If I surmised some answers I'd say:
1) An 'A' counts for everything beyond 100% also (just like it did in GBv2)
2) My understanding of grades over 100% is that a category or course total is the only thing that can go over 100% (doing so by the inclusion of extra credit items). In that case I'm not sure grade maximum has a relative bearing on the problem (but I don't know all the code)
3) How can we ever tell if a teacher entered a correct value?
4) I'm not real clear on why exporting or importing grades in excess of 100% is a problem. Perhaps you could expound for those of us not seeing all the facets.
5) Nobody I know has every asked for grades less than 0% so I don't think it makes sense supporting what people aren't asking for.

Over the past few months and stretching out into this Summer I have had and will get numerous opportunities to speak with institutions and organizations specifically about Moodle's gradebook. There isn't anything I would like more than to be able to say that "1.95 has got most of what you want and the rest is promised for 2.0 -- stick with the Moodle core gradebook".

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Mark Guy - Friday, March 6, 2009, 1:54 AM

Dear All,

Sorry to chuck a spanner in the works (UK English)

As a Science and Maths Teacher I fail to understand why ANYONE needs a grade over 100%.

100% = Perfect. Anything greater than 100% is an error/nonsense/gibberish/mistake.

I can understand that a pupil/student could aquire extra credit by doing alternative work etc for their class/course. And thus pick up a score to compensate for poor/missed etc work.

I find the grade book has many options that are not well documented, I often spend alot of time experimenting to get what I wan't. I would really appreciate someone more experienced than me clarifying the use of the current options So I can use it to its potential. This would allow my learning curve to catch up.

I am sure it can probually do most if not all of the things most users need if the users (Including me) Set it up in a top down approach, working to what you need rom the outset.

The majority of my problems in the grade book are caused by a single setting being different in one of the items.

A tool for bulk changing a group of items to a specific setting would be usefull (If a little dangerous)

Smile big grin at a stranger, It will worry them silly if they are suspicious, they may even smile back and make your day

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Michael Skwara - Saturday, March 7, 2009, 7:46 AM

I didn’t mean to suggest that this is a feature that everyone needs to use. In any given course, I think that instructors are only going to use the features that apply to the specific scenarios, goals, and academic methodologies that they find useful. None of my faculty use the “drop the lowest X grades” feature, but having it there gives those who do want to use it the flexibility to do so. That’s a great thing! The range of options that Moodle provides is a huge strength.

I do believe that this would be something of enough value to enough users to make it worth including as a core option. Moodle, and the Moodle gradebook in specific, have an astounding range of features and flexibility. The ability to accomplish extra credit would build upon that flexibility by providing an option that is extremely desirable to a number of us. An option to choose to use or not use extra credit by course would be fantastic and I would like to make the case that Moodle is a big enough tent to accommodate that.

That said, in response to Petr’s post about support, were this implemented I would be thrilled to write documentation for this feature and would also certainly be willing to keep an eye on the forums for questions about it. I suspect many of us who would like to use this feature would be willing to provide some testing as well. Hey- I would supply the code if I were capable of it. Not being so able, I can certainly volunteer my willingness to produce documentation and provide other support for the concept.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Petr Skoda - Sunday, March 8, 2009, 1:20 AM

Hello everybody,

I do not like grades >100% at all, but anyway I think I might have found a solution that should finally satisfy everybody.

Anybody who wants this feature back, please test patch from MDL-12380 on your test servers (latest 1.9.4+ cvs needed), please note you need to go to main admin page in order to initialise one new grade category setting.

I will not describe the details here, it is your homework to figure out how to use it and how it works

Petr

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Gary Anderson - Sunday, March 8, 2009, 3:19 AM

Thanks, Petr, for giving this a shot.

As I posted on the tracker entry, if you or Nicholas can apply this to the test.moodle.org site, I will make sure it if fully tested and feedback given on how this solves this desired feature.

--Gary

Re: Allowing grades over 100% and limiting aggregation types available

by Helen Foster - Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 6:13 AM

Hi everyone,

Petr's solution is now available for testing on our 1.9 test server (username: teacher, password: testm00dle).

Grades of over 100% may be allowed by selecting one of the new aggregation types, such as 'Mean of grades (unlimited)', or 'Sum of grades (unlimited)'.

Petr's solution also adds a useful admin setting for limiting which aggregation types are available (see attached screenshot). approve

With sufficient testing, we'll hopefully be able to include this feature in Moodle 1.9.5!

Re: Allowing grades over 100% and limiting aggregation types available

by Bob Puffer - Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 8:17 AM

Kudos and commendations for handling this and allowing an easy method by which category and course total aggregations can exceed 100% and at the same time affording everyone the opportunity to remove most of those aggrevating aggregation methods. I AM with Gary in the need to accomplish >100% grades, not just categories and course totals, though as with the LSU model.

Re: Allowing grades over 100% and limiting aggregation types available

by Helen Foster - Sunday, March 15, 2009, 8:00 AM

Update: Please see MDL-12380 for details of our latest proposed solution, which includes enabling administrators to allow grades over 100% for all grade items across the site.

We'd like to include settings for unlimited grade values and aggregation types in Moodle 1.9.5, together with other improvements listed in Development:Gradebook improvements in Moodle 1.9.5.

Please help by encouraging teachers to test these improvements on our 1.9 test site (username teacher, password testm00dle) and provide feedback.

Re: Allowing grades over 100% and limiting aggregation types available

by Gary Anderson - Monday, March 16, 2009, 10:58 AM

Thanks for the update, Helen. This will be an improvement, and as I told Martin D, I will write up a tutorial before 1.9.5 comes out on how to do Extra Credit in Moodle.
When the questions come up in the forums, we can direct people there, much like http://docs.moodle.org/en/Gradebook_1.9_Tutorial for weighted grades.

There are still some things that it does not do that were fairly easy before 1.9, like identifying individual items as extra credit.

I have put further comments at:

http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-12380?focusedCommentId=66812&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels%3Acomment-tabpanel#action_66812

and

http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-18566?focusedCommentId=66813&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels%3Acomment-tabpanel#action_66813

--Gary

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Michael Skwara - Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 6:32 AM

Thanks very much, Petr! I'll be working on figuring this out and trying some scenarios. I will let you know what I find.

Re: New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%

by Gary Anderson - Sunday, March 22, 2009, 4:15 AM

I have revised the entry in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Extra_credit) in the hopes of resolving this contentious issue once and for all

More seriously, Since this topic has been discussed in my posts and a number of tracker issues, is getting exhausting, and different implementations are still being debated, I have made a subpage of my personal talk page in docs.moodle.org to place where I am on this issue.

Hopefully this will reduce redundancy and disconnected thoughts while not just giving up on an important issue that can hopfully be resolved in a satisfactory say.

http://docs.moodle.org/en/User_talk:Gary_Anderson/Extra_credit_status

Take care,

--Gary