Importing grades is one of the places where some fixes definitely should be made. There are several annoyances in this one module:
- When uploading a file, the default file should be the last one that was uploaded (if any), and when you are selecting a file to upload, you should start in the same directory as the previous file.
- The "Identify User by" and Grade Item Mappings should default to the previous values (if any). IOW, if you have an assignment called "HW1", and last time, this grade was saved to "Homework #1", then "HW1" should get mapped to "Homework #1" by default. (This is especially annoying if you have half a dozen grade items to match up.)
- The Mother of All Annoyances: If the import fails, you get a generic error message (such as "Supplied grade is invalid", with nowhere to click to get more information). If one of your students registered late, and their number is not in the Moodle course, this happens. At the very least, Moodle should identify the student whose grade is invalid. Better yet would be to identify the student and the grade. Even better is to find all invalid grades and report them, so you can fix things all at once. As things stand, you have to delete the records for some of your students and then repeat the entire import process all over again (and you encounter the first two annoyances again) to see if that group is okay. Doing this half a dozen times is enough to raise one's blood pressure.
- Provide an option to stop automatic recalculation of grades once grades have been uploaded. I have a program that does that already, and they get uploaded to Moodle.