For a discussion forum activity, we want instructors to be able to grade student discussion posts using ratings, but not insist instructors need to rate every student discussion post in a discussion activity. The goal is for each discussion post that IS rated for a student in that discussion topic, it averages with any other discussions posts rated for that student in the discussion topic, and that average appears in Gradebook. We thought that selecting average of ratings would meet our need.
For example:
Let's say Joe Student made 5 posts to a discussion topic, and the instructor only rated 3 posts (100, 99, 98) We expect that the three rated discussion posts would average to a 99 and the grade of 99 would appear in the grade book. The behavior in moodle between rating a discussion and the gradebook does this correctly when the instructor rates the discussion ONLY once.
However, if a rating to a discussion is changed by the instructor from one day to the next, something else is occuring. What we were expecting is this: if an instructor rated a student in a discussion post on a Wednesday and rated the student a 98, but, on Thursday, the instructor decides to change the rating of the student too a 100 instead, we expected that changing the rating to 100 would UPDATE the rating. What is happening is the rating is NOT updated, but it takes rating from Wednesday and averages it with the next rating on Thursday for that same post. Is this how "average of ratings" is supposed to work or is it supposed to update if the rating changes?
Do we have other options for the ratings in a discussion to behave that way we would like, as mentioned in my first paragraph?
I thank you all in advance for anything you can shed light on with regards to this!