(Initial) Grade Book Item Visibility

(Initial) Grade Book Item Visibility

by Michael Hughes -
Number of replies: 2
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Just starting a thought on the visibility of grade items on creation and reset.

A scenario:

We had a course coordinator contact us asking why grades and feedback had been made available to students, having been assured that they would not be until they gave the go-ahead. 

It turns out that normally the gradebook item is set to hidden to embargo the release. 

This is *meant* to be done by the administrative team. What appears to have happened is that, following the course reset at the start of the year, the activity was updated to reflect the new submission dates etc but the grade item (which is in a completely different place) was not set back to hidden. Thus when the grades and feedback were set, they all instantly appeared to the students.

This makes me wonder if there should/could there be a setting in the standard grade elements part of an activity that sets the initial state of the corresponding grade item.

This would then also be observed during the  course reset process to put the activity and grade book back into a known state, whilst still leaving it up to individual teachers to determine what that state should be...

In reply to Michael Hughes

Re: (Initial) Grade Book Item Visibility

by Mark McKay -

Michael,

There are various settings that control the visibility of items in the gradebook and the release of grades to the student (review options in quiz, marking workflow in assignments), which should not be affected by a reset. From the course level, an item hidden at the course level is necessarily hidden in the gradebook. It is possible to have an item visible in the course, but hidden in the gradebook. Is this what you are saying is not being retained?

Mark

In reply to Mark McKay

Re: (Initial) Grade Book Item Visibility

by Michael Hughes -
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Yes, this is the scenario:

  1. Activity is created
  2. Activity's grade item is then hidden (to embargo the marks)
  3. Activity is completed by students
  4. Activity is graded by staff
  5. <time passes>
  6. Activity's grade item is set to visible to release the marks (or equally the grade item's hidden until time expires)

This set up (1 & 2) is not retained upon course reset, which is understandable as there is no way to set the "reset" state of items. 

This then leads to staff "forgetting" to reset the grade book item state.

Marking workflow is OK, but not always necessary as the staff aren't looking for individual's marks to be released but just to toggle the visibility of everyone's mark. However it's just in the Assignment module, this set up works consistently across different modules that have marks (or at least should if they've implemented things properly wink )