Sudden limited ability to enter/edit grades and feedback in Grader report

Sudden limited ability to enter/edit grades and feedback in Grader report

by Michelle Meyer -
Number of replies: 8

Until this morning, I was able to go to Grader report, turn on editing, and, for any student and any gradable assignment/quiz/forum item (as well as category totals and course total), enter or edit both grades and feedback by placing my cursor in the rectangular dialogue boxes (see, e.g., "Week 10 Quiz" column below). As of this morning, I am able to do so for only some items/categories (alas, the ones that I have already finished grading). For the two items I'm in the process of grading (e.g., "Research Memo"), no rectangular boxes appear anymore. If I had previously entered a grade, that grade appears, but is not editable. If I had previously entered feedback, that feedback is no longer displayed. If I hadn't yet entered a grade, the cell is empty for those students (except for the eye and lock icons--all cells are unlocked, however).



In the troublesome columns (e.g., "Research Memo"), when I click on the pencil icon (Single view for category total), I'm told "This grade item cannot be overridden."

After looking at Moodle docs for something relevant to that message, I found the following (here, under Hiding settings globally: https://docs.moodle.org/28/en/Grader_report):

Site administration>Grades>Grade category settings: 'Allow category grades to be manually overridden'. If this setting is disabled, users cannot override category grades.

I tried going to Grade Administration>Setup>Course grade settings to see if the box marked "Allow category grades to be manually overridden" was checked or not, but received the following error:

Coding error detected, it must be fixed by a programmer: Invalid $CFG->grade_minmaxtouse value.

The other change I've noticed as of this morning, if it helps, is that the entire interface of Grader report appears larger on my screen (the rest of Moodle appears as it always has, as do other tabs in my browser). So perhaps IT at my institution upgraded Moodle overnight or something. (I've contacted him but haven't heard back and my department director doesn't know anything about any update.) I think I'm currently in Moodle 2.8 (because when I click on the "Moodle docs for this page" link at the bottom of any page, it takes me to a 2.8 document). Finally, "Grading history" appears to be an entirely new category (I see that it was introduced in 2.8), although it might have been there previously and I just never noticed it before.

I'm desperate. I've spent hours scouring every preferences menu I can find and trying everything else I can think of to fix this.

Please, someone, take pity on me.

In reply to Michelle Meyer

Re: Sudden limited ability to enter/edit grades and feedback in Grader report

by Michelle Meyer -

New info: my institution uses Joule Moodlerooms, and it looks like we were indeed set to upgrade to Moodlerooms 2.8 overnight. (Thank you, Google.) So I'm guessing that this has to do with that. I'm actually not sure what the relationship is between Moodle 2.8 and Moodlerooms 2.8; I'm just a lowly faculty member.

In reply to Michelle Meyer

Re: Sudden limited ability to enter/edit grades and feedback in Grader report

by Derek Chirnside -

You have not reached the Moodlerooms support forums Michelle.  This is the Moodle.org forum for all of Moodle.  MR is a special unique version of Moodle.

Don't you have a help desk you can ask? Or try the Moodlerooms forums?

Like here: http://www.moodlerooms.com/joule/training-support-plans

-Derek

In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Sudden limited ability to enter/edit grades and feedback in Grader report

by Michelle Meyer -

Yes, I'm aware that I am on a Moodle forum page, and not on the Moodlerooms page. And I did surmise that MR might be somewhat different than Moodle, but surely there is considerable overlap between the platforms, and so someone here might have some insight into my problem. The MR 2.8 update, for instance, seems quite similar to the Moodle 2.8 update, which seems to have occurred some time ago. As far as I can tell, the Moodlerooms page that you direct me to, which I had of course already visited, offers various courses, webinars, and (for-fee) consultant services, none of which is what I'm looking for to solve a very specific, fairly urgent problem. Otherwise, MR's "community" directs me...here (see http://www.moodlerooms.com/community-initiatives/moodle-community). And as I noted in my OP, yes, I have contacted my institution's IT person--multiple times. He ought to have access to the MR ticket support service but, as I said, I've received no response to date.

In reply to Michelle Meyer

Re: Sudden limited ability to enter/edit grades and feedback in Grader report

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

This a 2.8 or later feature that you are not allowed to edit category totals that has apparently been turned on in your site.  Expand the category and you will be able to edit the actual activity which will then appropriately fill the category total.

In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Sudden limited ability to enter/edit grades and feedback in Grader report

by Michelle Meyer -

Hi Emma,

Thank you very much for the suggestion. As far as I can tell, though, I already have all categories expanded (in my version of Moodlerooms, "full view" as opposed to "aggregates only"). In the screenshot in my OP, you see Research Memo and Research Memo Total (one of the columns where I cannot submit or edit grade or feedback info), but there is only one item in that category, so it's fully expanded, as indicated by the box with the horizontal line across it. And indeed, my problem is that I cannot edit the Research Memo item (and another) itself, not just the category totals. sad

Michelle

In reply to Michelle Meyer

Re: Sudden limited ability to enter/edit grades and feedback in Grader report

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

The image posted above shows that there is only a category total, no actual grade item.  Are you sure that you haven't just created a category and not an actual grade item.  This would make sense because before the upgrade you would have been able to edit a category total and might have just treated it as just as a grade item.

In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Sudden limited ability to enter/edit grades and feedback in Grader report

by Michelle Meyer -

Emma, you are a genius and a godsend!

You're correct: for my two assignments where there is only one item in the category, my gradebook had been set up to include a category umbrella and a category total but no category item. I didn't set up my gradebook; someone who is on vacation now did. But I knew (vaguely) about categories and items and since Grader report showed two things and nothing more to be expanded, there didn't seem to be a problem: I thought the category umbrella thing was the "category" and the category total was the "item" (I figured that the item and the total of the items were one and the same, since these were one-item categories in both cases). I didn't realize that there must always be three things.

Before the upgrade to 2.8, I apparently had been entering grades and feedback into the category total column. After the upgrade, I guess that's no longer possible (or not possible with whatever default setting my institution uses) and because there was no category item I had nowhere to enter anything.

Anyway, I went back and added a "Research Memo" item to fill out the Research Memo Category and Research Memo Total and am now in business. Thank you so much!

In reply to Michelle Meyer

Re: Sudden limited ability to enter/edit grades and feedback in Grader report

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

Happy to have helped!  Now, go and enjoy your weekend!