I have a faculty member who has 20 points of extra credit available in his gradebook, but he only wants students to be able to get a maximum of 15 points. Can't use simple weighted means of grades, because that would make each 5 point extra credit assignment worth only 3.75 points. We can't use natural grading either, since it will only show the 20 point total, and there's no way to override the maximum with natural grading AFAIK. Any suggestions would be welcome!
Mike,
A couple of questions that might helps come up with a possibility. Which version of Moodle are you using? Is the instructor using categories in the grade book, if so are the activities all in one category?
Hi Paula, thanks for the reply! We're using Moodle 2.91+. The extra credit is in it's own category.
So can't you just make the category worth 15 points?
In order to set the max grade for the category to 15 points, I have to use simple weighted means of grades to unlock the maximum box. If I make the category worth 15 points max, then all that does is scale the values of the other point values. If someone got 15/20 points, it will show up as 11.25 points in the gradebook, which is not what he wants.
You could use a custom calculation, which then "unlocks" the max points. Keep in mind that custom calculations and exclude hidden items collide, so you have to choose one piece of functionality or the other.
Mark, how do I enable that? I know edit a calculation of a category total on the categories & items page, but I don't know how I'd use a custom calculation to unlock max points. Is there an example of this somewhere?
If you're using Natural Weighting, it happens automatically when you create a custom calculation. Your calculation will determine the numerator in the grade calculation, and the denominator is the maximum grade value from the category settings page. It's locked as 100 when natural weighting is the aggregation method, and defaults to the sum of the grademax of the items in the category when you create a custom calculation, but you can change it to what you want it to be.