excusing a student from an offline midterm

excusing a student from an offline midterm

by Aaron Naiman -
Number of replies: 12
Dear Moodlers,

Hi. I gave an offline midterm, and then added a Grade Category, with Grade Items, etc., and everything is honky-dory.

However, I have a couple of students who are excused from the midterm, and I would like to input that.

You say: why not simply use the "Aggregate only non-empty grades" feature for the entire Midterm category? (I think that would be correct, no?)

I could, but then I would have to manually go in a give a grade of 0, to all the students who did not sit for the test -- and there were a lot of them. sad

Bottom line: I would like the behavior that an empty grade is a 0, but be able to specify that a certain grade is excused. As far as I recall, that was possible pre-1.9.

adTHANXvance!

Aaron Naiman
naiman@jct.ac.il
In reply to Aaron Naiman

Re: excusing a student from an offline midterm

by Itamar Tzadok -
By 'excused' do you mean they get automatic 100% for the mid-term or they have a different grading scheme from that of the other students in the course? smile
In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: excusing a student from an offline midterm

by Aaron Naiman -
Dear Itamar,

Thanx for your question.

What I mean by "excused," is that it does not enter the calculation of their overall grade.

E.g., if each of the Homework and Midterm were 1/4 of the overall grade, and Final was 1/2 of the overall grade, then if someone is excused from the Midterm, the remaining factors (i.e., the Homework and Final) "pick up the slack" in a relative fashion, with the Homework being 1/3 of the overall grade, and the Final 2/3 of the overall grade.

(Isn't this how most teachers handle excused absences?)

Thanx for the thinx!

Aaron
In reply to Aaron Naiman

Re: excusing a student from an offline midterm

by Itamar Tzadok -
So basically you have two grading schemes:

0.25*Homework + 0.25*Midterm + 0.5*Final

0.33*Homework + 0.66*Final

All you need is a marker which will make only one of them active.

You can add a hidden grade item, say, 'Excuse_me' and update the grade to 1 for those who are excused. Then you set the course total with the following formula:

((0.25*Homework + 0.25*Midterm + 0.5*Final)*abs(Excuse_me-1)) + ((0.33*Homework + 0.66*Final)*Excuse_me)

smile
In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: excusing a student from an offline midterm

by Aaron Naiman -
Dear Itamar,

Thank you very much for spelling this out. Indeed it is exactly what I had in my own gradebook system I wrote -- but now I am Moodling. smile

Perhaps I was not clear enough in my question. Yes, what you wrote will work for an excused absence for the Midterm. But what if I also want to input an excused absence for the Final? Or for the Homework Category? Or for one specific week of Homework, within the Homework Category?

The reason I ask this, is because I know that before Moodle/Gradebook 1.9, one could specify "excused" for a specify grade item, and the rest was done for you.

I hope this is more clear now.

Thanx!

Aaron
In reply to Aaron Naiman

Re: excusing a student from an offline midterm

by Itamar Tzadok -

You were actually quite clear already in your previous description. The suggested formula can be easily extended by defining more grading schemes and adding corresponding flags. It seems though that you only need one more flag in the course level, for the final, and so the formula in the course total may be just a little bit more complex. The homework assignments may be handled in a similar way but separately in the Homework category.

Indeed older versions have this "exclude" feature. I never used it myself. I wonder how this feature knows in what relative fashion it should redistribute the slack. If it's a fixed way then the feature may not be very useful to anyone who doesn't follow this predetermined scheme. It wouldn't be surprising if this feature was intentionally omitted from later versions precisely for this reason.

Isn't this how most teachers handle excused absences?

Perhaps, but since now we are Moodling we may as well reconsider what most teachers do. Personally I don't see much point in mid-terms, all the more so if they give rise to many exclusions. If the Final Exam is necessary for a final grade there should be no exclusions there. The Homework component can have a built-in make-up element (e.g. 10 best of 11); in addition, each homework assignment can be available online for a whole week (this way it won't be enough to be sick for a couple of hours to get an exclusion; one will have to be very sick the whole week(!) and still the first such week will already be covered by the make-up assignment). This should cover all standard exclusion cases including required accommodations for special needs. If there are outstanding issues at all they are very few and at any rate they already deserve manual handling by virtue of being outstanding.

So perhaps the exclusion problem may be effectively resolved by restructuring the assessment scheme. Just a thought. smile

In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: excusing a student from an offline midterm

by Aaron Naiman -
Dear Itamar,

Thank you again for your detailed explanation. I can -- and will -- fill in the more complex formulae for the rest of the excused assignments, midterms, etc.

BTW, I feel that one should not have to conform or restructure his/her grading scheme to whatever is available in Moodle. Indeed, certain academic environments (asynchronous learning, students with army reserve duty, etc.), may require real "excused" policies, and not just workarounds. JMHO.

Thank you again for your input.

Aaron
In reply to Aaron Naiman

Re: excusing a student from an offline midterm

by Itamar Tzadok -
You're welcome. It is exactly my point that one should not have to conform to anything and that the sometimes-necessary restructuring is only made easier by the availability of platforms like Moodle especially for asynchronous learning which is essential with students who have to do army reserve duty. smile
In reply to Aaron Naiman

Re: excusing a student from an offline midterm

by Aaron Naiman -
Dear Moodlers,

Hi again. Based on the my emails with Itamar Tzadok (thanx!), I have implemented the various "excused" policies for my courses. Here are the details. It is kind of long, but I think it might be helpful to others "out there."

Firstly, I give weekly homework. The "Exercises" category (Exercises) includes, e.g., 11 Exercises, each one being an Assignment, and therefore a grade item in the Gradebook. The category is a mean of the 11 Exercises. So far, straightforward.

I now have a parallel hidden "Exercises Excused" category (Exercises.Excused), also with 11 hidden grade items: Exercise 1 Excused, Exercise 2 Excused, etc. Each of these grade items are 0 (blank) or 1, the latter being for a student who was excused from a specific week of exercises. The category is a sum of the grade items.

There is an additional hidden grade item (of the overall course category) called "Exercises Overall" (Exercises.Overall) for combining the previous two categories. The key here is its calculation:
(This really should just be:


but this caused an "Invalid formular", the subject/question of a different post.)

E.g., if a student received 2 confirmed excuses from the teacher, then s/he will have the average of their Exercises multiplied by 11/9.

BTW, it would be really nice if I did not have to hardwire 11 in there (twice!), and I could easily have access to the number of grade items in a category, something like a count() function. Any ideas?

Secondly, suppose I have administered a (possibly offline) midterm (Midterm), and I would like to have the ability to confirm an excused absence (for the entire test, of course).

Again I add a hidden grade item (i.e., to parallel the entire midterm) (Midterm.Excused) which can be 0 (blank) or 1.

If, e.g., the Exercises component of the course is 30%, the Midterm 20% and the final (Final) 50%, then this is the correct calculation for the Course total:


If a student has an excused absence from the midterm, his/her grade will be divided correctly by 80%, weighing the remaining components of the course proportionally.

(Note: if there was a Project in there worth, say, 15% of the Course total, then there would be in the denominator as well:


compensating for the excused project.)

I hope this is clear and helpful. (Please feel free to ask if not!)

HAGD,

Aaron
naiman@jct.ac.il
In reply to Aaron Naiman

Re: excusing a student from an offline midterm

by Itamar Tzadok -
A few quick suggestions.

It seems that one 'Excused exercises' grade item should be sufficient for the exercises part. Simply record in it the number of excused exercises, 1-11, and if you want to keep track of which exercises you can record their numbers in the feedback of the item. Of course the extreme case of 11 excuses will mess up the formula (div by 0) but there shouldn't be too many of those.

It also seems that you can omit the hidden Exercises.overall grade item and simply do the calculation in the category total of the Exercises category. The formula would be something like: sum(Ex1,Ex2,...,Ex11)/(11-Exercises.Excused)

I don't know why it gives the invalid formula error. Could you post a screenshot?

smile
In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: excusing a student from an offline midterm

by Aaron Naiman -
Thank you for the suggestions. Some comments/questions:
  1. I just assume use the grade category to sum the excused exercises, and not have to track them myself in the feedback area.
  2. Indeed there should be no case of all 11 exercises being excused -- but I was wondering what Moodle does with a divide by zero. wink
  3. Why would I want to write/hardwire sum(Ex1,Ex2,...,Ex11), when Moodle will sum the Exercises for me?
  4. Any idea how to get to the "11", i.e., the total number of exercise grade items? That would be neat, and not have to hardwire it in the equation. Any way of at least defining a constant somewhere, for the equation to use?
  5. Here is a pseudo-screenshot:

    Item name
    Exercises Overall
    Calculation Help with Calculation (new window)
    Invalid formula
    =Exercises*11/(11-Exercises.Excused)

    (Note: the two ID numbers are double-bracketed.)
Thanx,

Aaron
In reply to Aaron Naiman

Re: excusing a student from an offline midterm

by Itamar Tzadok -
  1. It seems to me that a constant somewhere else is just as hardwired as a constant in the equation.
  2. This may help reducing the number of auxiliary grade items so that if you have to make changes you go to one place.
  3. Yes, but you still track them yourself by looking up a certain grade item in that category and updating it. Moreover, with one item for 'excused' and details in the item's feedback you can release this information to the students in the grade report without overloading the report with items.
smile