Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

by Doug Moody -
Number of replies: 12

I have been searching for an answer to this, and I think it may not even be possible. But IO might have overlooked something. So before I give up, maybe someone here can help me.

The two attached graphics represent setting up a student grade report. In the first one, taken from "Categories and Items" setup screen, notice the red circled items. The bottom one titled "Course Final Grade" has a max grade set to 100. I did this deliberately to show the problem.

Notice that the other items are set at 24, 7, and 70 points respectively. These numbers are the correct total max grades for those categories. That would mean the max grade for the course ought to be 101 points. 

Look at the second graphic, and you can see that in the report that the student sees, each total points received in each category is calculated correctly for grade and range, as are the total points columns.

The problem I have that I am about to give up on is that moodle will not automatically figure out the max grade for each category or for the final overall grade.

This means that I have to constantly change this max grade column in the categories and items report any time I add a new assignment, because that would change the total points possible.

Yet, moodle IS adding up the columns of points earned and dividing it by the points possible (only if I put in a number in the max grade column, but not if I leave it blank)

That's crazy, and either it's me missing something simple (which is probable), or moodle is at fault.

Can someone clue me in on this before I give up and make these reports manually? I want it to automatically calculate the max grade from the total possible points in an assignment category, but so far I see no way to do this.

Please help!!

 

(Edited by Mary Cooch -to clarify post title- original submission Sunday, 16 March 2014, 3:45 PM)

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In reply to Doug Moody

Re: Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

by AL Rachels -
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Hi Doug,

If I'm not mistaken, it is an easy fix. Go change your category and course totals to Sum of Grades instead of Simple weighted men of grades.

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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

by Doug Moody -

Al,

I tried that. The trouble is, it sums up ALL grades, even the hidden ones. And yes, I do have "Show Hidden Items" as Do Not Show. I have "Hide Totals if they contain hidden items" set to "Show totals excluding hidden items"

When I set Sum of Grades, I get the totals as shown in the graphic below, with all hidden grades aggregated into the total number of points possible. I ONLY want to show grades that are active. The hidden grades are from past semesters and previous assignments that are not applicable to this current semester. Therefore, why should I want to show them? 

Compare this graphic with the ones above. The ones above were set as manual totals. The one below is set to "Sum Of Grades, and it shows 1181 total points possible. That would be fine if this were only an aggregation with all possible points this year showing. But I don't want to show points from past performances.

BTW, this screen shot is of a different course, so that's why some numbers are different, but the settings are the same in all my courses.

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In reply to Doug Moody

Re: Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

by Przemek Kaszubski -
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Hello,

"But I don't want to show points from past performances."

Maybe I'm misreading the report but:

  1. Does "hidden assignments" mean hidden in the gradebook or on the course page? The two should be in sync but sometimes are not - from my experience. In the teacher / admin Simple view of Categories and Items - are the unwanted items really hidden?
  2. Assuming the hidden activities are (also) properly hidden in the gradebook, what I sometimes do in such cases is set up a separate grading category called, say, "Excluded from gradebook" or suchlike, and make sure the total in it is set to zero. I place all the hidden, or any other unimportant items in there. AND I hide this category in the Gradebook, so the students never see it or its components in their reports.

Also just wondering - why want aggregation as "Sum of grades" (or manual formula to the effect) AND the "Aggregate only non-empty grades" setting? On my site, the "Sum of grades" disables the "Aggregate only non-empty grades". 

It would be great to have access to a copy of such a misbehaving gradebook for testing. I'm almost sure the problem is solvable.

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In reply to Doug Moody

Re: Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

by Bob Puffer -

Doug, you've come upon the single biggest reason I wrote the LAE Grader report and also stumbled on (currently) the longest running disagreement over how grades should be calced. It gets worse if you have nested SWM cats. LAE Grader and LAE User (recently released and available now in Plugins) use 'accurate points' (optional). I hacked the cats and items screen so everybody at my institution sees the same thing all the time. Robert Russo from LSU gave me an idea to hack it as a 'report plugin' so I'm planning on doing that and will release.

 

Also of note, Sum does indeed have a bug that makes it ignore the 'agg only non-empty grades' setting. University of Minnesota wrote a patch that is here. Mark from UofM said they were working on a more elegant solution but I haven't seen that yet.

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In reply to Bob Puffer

Re: Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

by Doug Moody -

Bob,

 

Why would anyone disagree about fixing a bug? Its simple math. Surely someone has submitted a bug tracker on this. If so, I would vote for it, and everyone else ought to also. This is driving me crazy.

 

As an aside, I see that you commented in my post at https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=256409. I will indeed see about the author maybe fixing that issue. I foudn out where it is coming from (its coming from the Course Total calculations), and since the sum of grades isn't working correctly, I can see why the block isn't picking up the right numbers either.

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In reply to Doug Moody

Re: Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

by Barbara Taylor -

Please tell me that grade book is something that will be fixed in 2.7.  Some of our faculty are losing faith in the grade book.  We would like to test out Bob's LAE grader for 2.7 if the issues are not resolved in Moodle core.  We look forward to any releases that you put out that make it easier.  The issue of why grade items get locked and how to unlock them easily hasn't been resolved but I have seen it demoed with the LAE grader (I think that is the one).  

Barbara

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In reply to Barbara Taylor

Re: Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

by Doug Moody -

From what I am seeing here, this tracker ought to be labeled as MAJOR, not MINOR. 

Certainly an error in calculation is a major issue, is it not? After all, students passing a course could depend on it.!

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In reply to Barbara Taylor

Re: Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

by Bob Puffer -

Gradebook overhaul is definitely on but not until 2.8. One of my suggested changes is to eliminate aggregations altogether, use Sum of grades (fixed) which gets you the right points and allow the instructor to override the 'natural' weights of the grades in Cats and items. MD likes the idea a lot and has just upgraded the associated tracker to Major.

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In reply to Bob Puffer

Re: Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

by Tim Hunt -
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Before we eliminate aggregations, do we know how  many peole are currently using them, and which options they are using?

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

by Floyd Saner -

Tim poses a very important question.  I fully agree that there are problems with the current grade book. However I also appreciate the flexibility provided by the variety of aggregation methods.  

With enough options it would be possible to duplicate almost all of the current aggregation methods with just Sum of Grades.  But Mean, Weighted Mean and Simple Weighted Mean are default aggregation configurations used by many, many instructors.

On the other hand, in many years of assisting teachers with the grade book, I have never found a use for aggregation methods median and mode, although they are statistically interesting.

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In reply to Floyd Saner

Re: Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

by Przemek Kaszubski -
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Moodle can be used for (educational) research purposes as well as for day-to-day practice. Total elimination of all aggregation methods might cut research users off.

Ergo, I also think the mean methods at least should remain.

On the other hand, simplification of the gradebook (and its more visible integration when first setting up activities on a course page) is indeed a priority - coaching people in the use of a gradebook (and having myself to re-learn the same tricks over and over again) is often a challenge.

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In reply to Floyd Saner

Re: Help with Grade calculation -is this possible?

by Bob Puffer -

Thanks for the valuable feedback. In actuality Sum of grades (when the Aggregate only non-empty grades is fixed) acts exactly like Simple weighted mean of grades but includes accurate points totals which is the "feature" most complained about in the gradebook forum since 1.95.

I've actually done this and it worked quite well. We covered SWM (with Sum of grades working right) and WM (by allowing overrides of natural weights) and did not take into account any of the other agg methods (which I've never heard of anyone using). It eliminated about 35% of the overall gradebook code including a ton of now, unneeded libraries.

I hear what you're saying regarding total elimination of agg methods. Perhaps we could leave additional agg methods as an advanced feature not necessary for instructors to tackle.

Simple is simply best. We cannot and do not presently handle all edge cases in the gradebook but manage to steer a lot of people away from it because of its complexity.

We're (LSU, University of Minnesota, Luther College, et. al.) hoping to conduct a working group on the gradebook at the Moodle Research Conference. Timing may not be right as MD indicates 2.8 gradebook will be worked on June - October.

Mary, I wonder if you can move this thread to the Gradebook forum?

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