1Hello,
Moodle is wonderful. We love it. But we cannot use it, yet, because of one little problem. Here is the little Moodle problem that you can probably help us solve:
1. Our students take a pretest.
2. They jump into the course at different points, based upon the results of the pretest. If there are twenty-five activities/assessments in the course,for example, some start at the beginning, others at activity three, others at activity ten, etc.
3. The activities/assessments that did not apply to them do not affect their final grades.
How do we exempt students from the activities that they do not need? The grade book can do this, right?
We probably cannot simply give them credit for the exempted activities. (Looking into that, though.)
I know we are just missing something obvious.
Thank you for your help!
key word: creditrecovery
In antwoord op littledebbie pastries
Re: Exempting students from some assessments
deur littledebbie pastries -
Hmmm... Could the solution be to "aggregate only non-empty grades," I wonder?
"Non-existent grades are either treated as minimal grades or not included in the aggregation. For example, an assignment graded between 0 and 100 for which only half the students have been graded will either count the non-graded submissions as 0 (option switched off) or will ignore them (option switched on)."
Does that mean we can simply tell students not to take, let's say, the first three assessments and that this will not affect their grades?
If so, is there some way we can flag the assessments that were not required, so that we easily recognize the difference between a zero and an exempted assessment?
Thank you for any light you can shed on this for us.
"Non-existent grades are either treated as minimal grades or not included in the aggregation. For example, an assignment graded between 0 and 100 for which only half the students have been graded will either count the non-graded submissions as 0 (option switched off) or will ignore them (option switched on)."
Does that mean we can simply tell students not to take, let's say, the first three assessments and that this will not affect their grades?
If so, is there some way we can flag the assessments that were not required, so that we easily recognize the difference between a zero and an exempted assessment?
Thank you for any light you can shed on this for us.
Your assumption in your reply is correct if you're using Moodle 1.95 or higher. Examine closely what the student will see in their user report and decide if you need to differentiate more dramatically between exempted grades and zeroes... it hasn't been a problem for us. To do so would mean individually editing each user-grade instance from the grader report and setting the "Excluded" checkbox.
Be warned! This is a time consuming and tedious process. We really need a way exclude multiple students from a task quickly. At present to exclude a student from a task you have to edit each student individually
yep... sucks
Hmmm... This is an interesting conversation.
So this would work:
Or do I misunderstand?
-- Art
So this would work:
1. Students take a pretest.
2. Based upon the results of the pretest, students are exempted from one or more assessments. Some students have to do all twenty or thirty tasks in a course, some only seventeen, others only twelve, etc.
3. The teacher just leaves the grades for the unnecessary tasks blank. Because the gradebook has been set up to "aggregate only non-empty grades," the grades work out in the end.
2. Based upon the results of the pretest, students are exempted from one or more assessments. Some students have to do all twenty or thirty tasks in a course, some only seventeen, others only twelve, etc.
3. The teacher just leaves the grades for the unnecessary tasks blank. Because the gradebook has been set up to "aggregate only non-empty grades," the grades work out in the end.
Or do I misunderstand?
-- Art
That sums it up accurately and would be the approach I would recommend, rather than the "sucky one".
The problem with Art's solution is that aggregating non empty grades can give students a false impression of progress. A student who does 10 of the 17 tasks required and averages 90% for them gets the impression they are on 90% until the instructor goes in and zeros the incomplete items. This zeroing incomplete items is, again a time consuming student by student function.
Two improvements to the gradebook are needed. 1. The ability to flood fill a grade 2. The ability to exclude multiple students from a task at once.
I have voted for both these in the tracker. Do the same.
Two improvements to the gradebook are needed. 1. The ability to flood fill a grade 2. The ability to exclude multiple students from a task at once.
I have voted for both these in the tracker. Do the same.
I agree, Rob...zeroing many students incompletes is time-consuming. We removed the option of aggregating empty grades so we provided the instructors with a "zerofill" icon on the controls line. This is a part of the latest version of the laegrader report but I'd gladly break out the code if someone's interested in using it -- fairly simple to integrate.