Currently Assignments and LTI module show up in gradebook even though the grade is set to "No grade". This is because they treat "No grade" as "No grade with feedback"
Should Assignment have a option to select either (No grade/No grade with feedback) ? If yes, should it be valid for all activities like Quiz ? Is it going to make things confusing?
or
Do every assignment need feedback without grade (as it is implemented now) ?
Looking for feedback to get to some conclusion for MDL-18770
We were discussing this in the grade book forum a while back. My thought is that every activity should have the option for a) the activity to be visible or not b) the grade to be visible or not and these should be independent of each other. Currently, we have the option to see hidden activity grades in the grade book but it does not work. This is very frustrating - it is very common to want to hide completed sections of a course but then the students cannot see the grades.
I was looking at how grades and feedback work hand-in-hand. I think it will be fine to assume if "No Grade" is selected and NO feedback option is selected by teacher then assignment should not be visible in gradebook. On the other hand if grade set to "No Grade" and atleast one feedback option is selected, then it should be visible in gradebook.
Or is it really important to have another option to show/hide grade from gradebook?
Rajesh,
Thanks for the clarification. For reference, I am cross-posting it here:
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Hello Joe, On New Assignment edit page there are two section
What I am saying here is if "Grade" in "Grade section" is set to "No Grade" and NO feedback type is selected then assignment will not appear in gradebook. On the other hand if Feedback type selected and put feedback in grade book (Feedback comment) then it should be visible in gradebook even though Grade is set to "No Grade" Other option to resolve this is to have a checkbox to say if grade should appear in gradebook. Personally, I don't like this as this seems more complicated to understand. Anyway will leave that decision on the feedback form community. |
My thoughts:
I think this approach is a move in the right direction. Since Grades and Feedback are so closely connected (and some might say, inextricably linked, given the conversations on the topic), it seems to me that it would make sense to locate those 2 sets of options closer to one another on the Edit Settings page for an assignment. Dare I say, place them in the same section, and rename it "Grade and Feedback Types," placing the set of 3 feedback checkboxes after the 6 grade choices? With this structure in place, I would advocate for the following:
With the 3 feedback checkboxes located much closer to the grade options on the Edit Settings page, I think this interface design is intuitive and will require little explanation (though a bit of explanation is always a good idea).
Joe
All,
Thinking about this a bit more, I'd support what Rajesh suggested above (quoted in my post above) and think we can keep the interface simple and straight-forward by NOT adding a "No grade, with feedback" option ... if and only if ... the feedback checkboxes are moved much closer to the grade options on the Edit Settings page. I'm going back on part of what I posted above, but still think it'd be pretty important to move the feedback checkboxes.
Joe
Agree with Susan: the gradebook is for grades. If an activity is set to No grade, then it must never show up there.
The real issue is that 'No grade with feedback' is bit of a hack to get feedback centralized in some manner across multiple activities in one place by putting it in the gradebook with all the graded activities. And it was grafted onto the gradebook. because of an original design assumption that feedback was only for something graded.
Instead, I would suggest solving the issue by creating a good interface for feedback as a separate view related to but perhaps outside of the Gradebook.
Feedback does not need to be tied to Grades. It can be a whole tool all its own, like Completion and Badges, with a report of its own.
Also: agree with Emma's point about the independence of hiding an activity and its grade: the ability to hide a past activity is very useful, but its grade still needs to be there for students to see.
I agree that it makes sense to provide a method for an assignment activity to be hidden from the course without its grade disappearing from the student's view in the gradebook. I also agree that we want to take care in not overly complicating the interface. One question I think we'd want to answer is, "What should the default behavior be?" Said another way, if a teacher creates an activity, grades it, and then hides it, should it:
Thoughts?
Joe
I think that should be an admin option to set at the site level as a default for courses if you want to actually link them.
I like the idea of keeping them separate altogether. I think we should just have an extra edit icon/option for hide grade. That would be easy to access and part of the general functionality for the course.
I think making the default behavior as a site-level default for courses is prudent. However, I'm not exactly following what you are suggesting about linking them or keeping them separate. What's the "them" to which you are referring?
The hidden quality of the grade and the activity. I think those should be separate from each other and not linked.
Why not let it be an option to link them or not?
I've been administering Moodle since the early days and we have approximately 600 active course sites per semester. I have to say that this "feature" has been one of the most annoying and I still, to this date, have no logical explanation for our teachers as to why, when they say No Grade, a grade still appears in the gradebook. What's worse is that when they are using weighted mean of grades they have to blindly make sure that they have their 100% weight adding up accurately in the gradebook with all of these faux assignments that are not supposed to be worth anything but still showing up as 100 (because unlike sum of grades, weighted does not actually add up the grades/weights for you). They see the 100 and get confused and go back and check to make sure they said No Grade. It doesn't make sense to them.
We have a lot of instructors that use the assignment module as a dropbox and it works really well for them. Sometimes the files that students upload are for a grade, sometimes they are not. If there is an option in the assignment module for No Grade then logically it makes no sense to display it in the gradebook regardless of whether or not they want to give that student feedback.
As far as feedback goes, the teacher can enter feedback into the comment box in the assignment module and/or upload a response file, so I still understand the need to push it to the gradebook? OR are you saying that if you do not push the grade to the gradebook the teacher will no longer have the ability to enter feedback or give a response file in the assignment module? If that's the case, then having the grade pushed to the gradebook as "-" would be much better than not having it at all IMO.
I strongly vote with the (No grade/No grade with feedback) option.
As far as implementing that with other activities I think it would have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis? I mean, there is no Grade option in the quiz like there is in the Assignment. The quiz is set up differently with grades/marks assigned per question not per module and then a max grade for the entire quiz so yes, that would probably be confusing.
Thank you so much for addressing this and seeking feedback!!
Assignment should have an option of "No Grade" that does not create a column in the gradebook. There are many other ways to give feedback other than online. Sometimes in a hybrid learning environment feedback is given face to face or in writing in a notebook. We give instructors the option of not integrating with the calendar tool by not setting a due date - it only makes sense to not integrate with the gradebook by setting "No Grade". If a grade is not needed then there is no need for a grade column. Feedback can be given in other ways.
I too use an assignment for items that need no grade. I have a grading category called "Ungraded Event" and then hide the category in the grade book.
I would like to have an "invisible until graded" option.
Yes, we will be able to have the non-graded assignment and do not display it in the gradebook, which is great. But to make it work, we will now have to remove the option for teachers to leave written comments.
Based on what I see, it is quite rare for teachers to have the assignment dropbox where they would not want to provide a response to the students.
Imho, it would be better to have a checkbox on activities - include in the gradebook vs not.