Missing grades for particular students

Missing grades for particular students

by Sali Kaceli -
Number of replies: 21

Recently, I am having a few faculty notice that the grades and feedback is missing for particular students. The symptoms:

  • The rest of the student grades seems fine. 
  • For the students that are missing the grades, most of the grades (approximately 80%) are missing while a few grades for a couple assignments show up. 
  • Another weird thing is that for the student having the problem, the greadebook report shows up all incorrectly formatted for some courses not even listing all the assignments. While for other courses the grade report shows up fine but with missing grades. 

Environment: 

  • LAMP setup running on Ubuntu. 
  • Moodle 2.3.1+ build 20120712

Questions: 

What might be causing such inconsistencies and how can I get the grades back for these students and fix this problem? 

In reply to Sali Kaceli

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Jessica Sender -

We've been having the same issue, except this time all the grades for a particular assignment are missing. Any ideas out there?

In reply to Jessica Sender

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Emma Richardson -
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This is a setting that needs to be changed in php.ini. You need to increase the max input vars setting.

 

In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Sali Kaceli -

Until a week ago, I had max_input_vars set to 5000 after reading about this issue. Then since last week, i had set this to 20000. Most likely this happened prior to changing it to 20,000. The question is also how I can bring that data back? 

In reply to Sali Kaceli

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Emma Richardson -
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The grades were never accepted. You will need to re-enter them.

In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Sali Kaceli -

The problem is that this is not for just one class. It is for a bunch of courses random assignments and students. Not an easy solution when you have 700+courses for this semester. I am finding that if you unenrol the student from our DB synch (i.e. remove the student from the course) and then add them manually, some or most of the grades show up (so they are stored somewhere). 

There still has to be a way to run a report or identify these disprepancies in what is in the grade history and matching it with what has not been updated/posted in the gradebook report. Very frustrating to say the least. This is like asking someone to keep the money with you but then the balances and/or transactions either do not match or are completely missing. 

 

In reply to Sali Kaceli

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Alan Kmiecik -

Hey Sal,  had the same problem with one course of about 300 people.  There is a Moodle Tracker bug report out there (can't find it now).

But yes, the grades are still in the database, just getting dropped from grade book.  So, if we could find a Moodle database wiz, I might guess that there is a database field that could be updated. Don't know for sure.

I ended up doing a manual enrol for the students with missing grades.  Unfortunately, the Restore Grades function only works for manual enrol, not for CSV upload.

 

In reply to Alan Kmiecik

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Emma Richardson -
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Are you sure the grades are still in the database - it is my thought that the grades are not being accepted at all.

In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Alan Kmiecik -

Hey Emma , Can you elaborate on why this works?  or what the core problem might be?

Thanks!

In reply to Alan Kmiecik

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

Think of the grading sheet as a huge grid.  For each student, for each assignment is an entry.  If you have quick feedback enabled, this doubles the number of possible entries.  So 20 students times 20 assignments jumps quickly to 800 (20*(20*2)) possible entries.  Somehow php counts the entries in the grid, when you get to the 2000th entry (normally where input-vars is set) it will not accept any more entries.  This means that grades will go in for half the students in an assignment and not the other half because that is where the limit was reached.

Upping the setting in php resolves the issue - I have seen people up this setting to as high as 50,000 with no obvious side effects.

You can also take care of this by entering the grades through the assignment instead of the gradebook or if you are using groups, just select one group and this shrinks the number of possible entries in the gradebook and allows you to enter the grades.

Teacher really should notice this when they are entering grades...

 

In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Alan Kmiecik -

Sweet, thanks.

About the php.ini, I'm in a hosted environment.  Two of my many Moodle instances have a php.ini (don't know why) and the root has one.

Should I put a php.ini in the folder of the Moodle instance I was to change, then make the settings change?

In reply to Alan Kmiecik

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Emma Richardson -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers

I am not sure what environment you are using but the php.ini file is normally in your web server files.  In Debian, it is found under apache2.   The webserver needs to know where it is to read the settings - for that reason, I do not believe that you can put it in your Moodle folder.  You will need to have the people hosting your Moodle make the change for you.

In reply to Jessica Sender

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Sali Kaceli -

We are having that issue too recently where the grades for particular assignments toward the beginning of the course are all missing for all students. Today I had a case of an instructor missing 6 of 13 assignments for 106 students in the course. All grades from the first 6 assignments gone.

The grades that are missing are from Sept. early Oct.  and they were there at least around Thanksgiving. Good thing we had a backup from Thanksgiving that we were able to restore and go back to the grades. The 2.3x upgrade has had a lot of gradebook issues for us.  

The max_input_vars in php.ini on the apache server has been set to 20,000. Should it be set higher to avoid this kind of issue? 

-----

For a complete video tutorial of Moodle 2.3, click here: 

 

In reply to Sali Kaceli

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Sali Kaceli -

Another thing I have noticed: 

If a grade is entered from the gradebook, the grade is overriden (i.e. turns the color on the cell and if you go into edit mode clicking on the little edit icon, there will be the overridden checkbox). You try to uncheck the override box, and click Save, then the process will take a long time. When completed 1+minutes, you will find that all grades in that assignment for all students are forever gone. 

Anyone else seeing this behavior? Any solutions? 

In reply to Sali Kaceli

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Michele Edwards -

Season's Greetings Sal.

Thank you for posting this excellent video.

Michele Edwards

In reply to Michele Edwards

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by John Hughes -

We are also seeing this.  Attached is a screen shot.  Their result for "Test-Information-Management-Principles" is not being showed in their grade book as part of a user report. However if i go and look at what they have done I can see they have taken the test 3 times - and I can see each score.

We are using  2.3.2+ (Build: 20121018)

John

Attachment screen_shot_pf.jpg
In reply to John Hughes

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by John Hughes -

Oh - I should have said we have changed the php.ini value to 20,000 -and are still seeing this problem

John

In reply to John Hughes

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by John Hughes -

And this is another example- We know the student has taken all the quizzes/tests- yet some are blank

John

In reply to John Hughes

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Emma Richardson -
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It looks like the quizzes have been hidden.  What happens if you unhide the quizzes?  

In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by John Hughes -

All our quizzes are actually hidden until students performs a particular activity

John

In reply to John Hughes

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by John Hughes -

After careful analysis - I've sorted it out - and it was my fault.  For some of the tests we had the "Marks" check box unticked in the the "Later, while the quiz is still open".  So having this unticked means the relevant grade book entry is hidden (ie greyed out)

We still have the problem - which I reported in another posting - that the order of displayed quizzes in the grade book does not match the order we have in the course.  Is anyone else seeing this?

John

In reply to John Hughes

Re: Missing grades for particular students

by Emma Richardson -
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Glad you figured it out.  I am guessing that the order in the gradebook might be coming from the order that the quizzes are added.  You can always reorder them in the Grade Items and Categories tab.