Pam,
Here's how I would tackle this:
Attendance is worth 30 points (15 sessions at 2 points each)
Participation is worth 50 points (2 assessments at 25 points each)
Homework is worth 60 points (multiple assignments at various points each)
Quizzes are worth 30 points (3 at 10 points each)
Team Project is worth 30 points (3 assessments with 20 points each)
Go to Administration:Grades : Categories and Items and make a category for each of the assignment types you list above. For
- Attendance (using Dmitri's Attendance module) Aggregation -> Sum of Grades, max grade 30. Check aggregate only non-empty grades.
- Participation : Aggregation -> Sum of Grades, max grade 50. Check aggregate only non-empty grades.
- Homework : Aggregation -> Simple weighted mean. max grade 60. Check aggregate only non-empty grades. By choosing 'simple weighted mean' you make the importance of the assignment be a function of the mark you grade it out of. Thus a grade out of 50 would be worth half as much as a grade out of 100. Normally, you want all the assignments in a category to have the same weight, so I would strongly advise making all these homework assignments have the same max grade (eg 100). Setting the max grade to 60 will report the mean of all homework assignments out of 60 points.
- Quiz. Aggregation -> Sum of Grades, max grade 30. Check aggregate only non-empty grades.
- Team Project. Aggregation -> Sum of Grades, max grade 30. Check aggregate only non-empty grades.
- Finally, set your whole course to Aggregation : Simple weighted Mean with max of 100 and your final grade will be a %. You can display the grade as a letter or % (or both) as you wish.
Try this out yourself with some dummy marks. You'll find that it works.
If you set up the grading categories *before* creating the
Activities in Moodle you can add the activity to the appropriate Category
when you create it. This is really handy.
Assigning moodle activities to categories like this really does make sense and it help you and your students keep track of their grades and where they need to improve. Especially with the Homework you want the flexibility of adding or removing assignments and provided you keep all the homework assignments to the same max points when you set them up and then allocate to the Homework grade category Moodle will do all the arithmetic to give the total out of 60 points. A little work up front really does make life a lot easier in the long run. But do remember to check 'aggregate only non-empty grades' otherwise Moodle will add in ungraded items to the total which will confuse and upset students.
Hope this helps
Mark
