Hi folks...I'm sorry, I'm not getting the explanations in the moodle docs! Can someone explain to me how a teacher can create a quiz or assignment that is able to award extra credit for certain questions, or to add extra credit to the final score? I read the doc...I don't get it!
This link has a good explanation about it: http://department.monm.edu/is/help-docs/moodle2.3/gradebook/extra-credit.htm
Thank you so much for your reply. This document is helpful. But, it looks like this is an extra item outside of a quiz or activity. Is there a way to add an additional question directly to a quiz and make that question an extra credit question? So, that, if a student answers the question correctly, they get an extra 5 points added to their overall grade on the quiz, but if they don't answer, it doesn't affect them?
Thank you!
Well Deirdre, the only good thing I can say is, "Be glad it is not midterm or end of term!" That is when I used to get grade book questions at 10:00pm.
First some background. When the grade book was revised quite a few years ago, there was an interesting discussion. U.S. users were asking, "Where is the extra credit option?" European users were saying, "What? Why would one ever give extra credit?" I presume you are located in the U.S.
I do a lot of seminars on the Moodle grade book. It is a powerful tool, but can be difficult to configure. Here are some suggestions.
- The default setting for the Moodle grade book is that you cannot give a grade higher than the maximum number of points for the assignment. So, if an assignment has 50 as the maximum number of points, you cannot give a grade any higher than that. However, this can be changed by the system administrator. Go to Site administration ... Grades... General settings. At the bottom of that page is an option, Unlimited grades. Select that option and save the changes. You will now be able to award extra credit to any assignment by entering a number greater than the maximum, e.g. 55/50.
- If you want to make an entire assignment be extra credit, then set the aggregation method in the grade book (Categories and items) to "Simple weighted mean of grades" or 'Sum of grades'. Under those methods of grading an 'Extra Credit' column will appear and you can mark the assignment as an extra credit assignment. If the aggregation method is "Simple weighted mean of grades", then all the assignments included in that aggregation will automatically be weighted according to their maximum scores.
- If your version of Moodle has an aggregation method, "Mean of grades (with extra credit)", do NOT use that method. That method of aggregation is being deprecated and will most certainly give you strange results.
Whatever you decide to do, carefully check the aggregation of grades to be certain it is calculating the way you want it to.
-Floyd
Wow, thank you so much for this explanation. I think you answered my question from my other forum post about the "unlimited grades" setting. If I turn that on, will it affect any of the grades already accumulated in the gradebook? Can you come teach us about gradebook?! jk..We are new to Moodle, and have no clue, really, at this point, what we are doing. I am VERY thankful it is not mid-terms time!
So, if I set the unlimited grades to "yes" and create a quiz, with 11 questions, but I only expect the students to answer 10 and the 11th one is extra credit, how do I accomplish that with the max grade, etc...
(Yes, we are in the US) !
Wow, thank you so much for this explanation. I think you answered my question from my other forum post about the "unlimited grades" setting. If I turn that on, will it affect any of the grades already accumulated in the gradebook? Can you come teach us about gradebook?! jk..We are new to Moodle, and have no clue, really, at this point, what we are doing. I am VERY thankful it is not mid-terms time!
See extra credit is really extra credit. Moodle docs has more info:http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Grades_FAQ
What always helps me with Moodle too is going to YouTube and watching videos on how to do things in Moodle. With Lynda.com, you have to pay to watch Moodle videos.
If I turn on "unlimited grades", it says it will recalculate all the grades on my site. Does that include manual grades? Will it change anything if none of the grades were above maximum? We have several quizzes that were essay quizzes and were graded manually. I don't want anything to change with those grades. Also, our grades sync to Renweb, so I hope nothing will change.
Also, can I set the points in a quiz to a higher number than the "maximum grade" and have it calculate the extra points as extra credit? (ie: instead of changing the gradebook grade manually)? For example, have 6 questions worth 1 point each, set the maximum grade to 5 and have the extra 1 point added the max to give extra credit?
Deirdre,
As far as I know, enabling 'unlimited grades' will not change anything which is already in the database because none of those grades should be greater than the maximum. However, if teachers used grade item settings (grade book...categories and items) such as 'Multiplicator' or 'Offset' then the calculated grades might change, depending on the calculated values. However, since your institution is fairly new to Moodle, I doubt anyone used those settings. I generally advise against changing the default Multiplicator or Offset settings.
Changing the maximum points on a quiz will not work as extra credit. Moodle automatically scales all the individual question values according to the maximum quiz points. There are a number of schemes to get around this limitation, see https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=133561, but I strongly advise to avoid these schemes. They involve using the Multiplicator and will be affected by the 'unlimited grades' settings. This is one case where I suggest rethinking what you want to do, rather than trying to bend the grade book to do something for which it is not designed.
-Floyd