Attendance & Gradebook don't match

Attendance & Gradebook don't match

by Lisa Wiebenga -
Number of replies: 12

I have a faculty using the attendance module to track and assign points for attending class. If a student comes to class, he/she gets 10 points. Late students get 8 points; no points for absence. The attendance module reflects this; the total grade for attendance is set at 150 points because there are 15 class meetings.

When I look at reporting in the Attendance module, it looks like it should:

screen shot


It's counting UP - we've had six class sessions, so the maximum grade to date should be 60 points (less for students with absences).

In the grabedbook, however, attendance seems to be counting down, and with a different increment. So students with perfect attendance see 150 points; a student with one absence sees 125 points.

The setting for Attendance was set for REAL. I changed it to Percentage (real), so it's a slightly better reflection (so a student with perfect attendance now see 100%(150) and a student with an absence see 83%(125).

What am I doing wrong? I want the gradebook to reflect attendance to date.

Thanks in advance!

Lisa

Average of ratings: Useful (2)
In reply to Lisa Wiebenga

Re: Attendance & Gradebook don't match

by Emma Richardson -
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Your gradebook is set to ignore empty grades.  Change this setting in the gradebook settings.

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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Attendance & Gradebook don't match

by Lisa Wiebenga -

Tried that - didn't make any difference in the calculating of the attendance.  When grade book is set to calculate empty grades as zero, it still counts all attendance as 150 points (if student has perfect attendance).

I currently have the attendance hidden from students, but the gradebook is set to count grades into the total even if hidden. It's calculating the percentages correctly (a student with perfect attendance has 100% - and I've got final grades set to show only percentages).

Thanks for the tip!


Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Lisa Wiebenga

Re: Attendance & Gradebook don't match

by Elyse Crichton -
This is happening to me too! I put the Attendance activity into its own category and made sure to "Include empty grades," but it's still messing up midterm grades. 


My example :

- the whole course attendance has 215 pts

- at the time of the midterm report, 95 points had been possible

- student Anna had 90/95 points displaying on her Attendance report ( 95%)

- in the gradebook, it showed Anna had 95% (204/215)


It was giving the student (and professor) an inaccurate view at midterms because it gave her Attendance points she hadn't had the opportunity to earn yet. Even though Anna had failed a large exam, these inflated Attendance points showed she had a B in the course. The professor found this error and ended up not trusting anything in her gradebook; leaving her to do the math outside of Moodle. This is very concerning to me. How are students or professors supposed to trust Moodle grades with something like this?

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In reply to Elyse Crichton

Re: Attendance & Gradebook don't match

by Emma Richardson -
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Apparently that must be how the attendance module grades but you can reduce the weight it has in the course so that it doesn't affect the overall grade so much.

I believe it is designed that way so that if a student has perfect attendance for the first half of the class, it does not make sense to give them 50% as that could drop their overall grade when they have done nothing wrong.

 

 

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Attendance & Gradebook don't match

by Elyse Crichton -

Thanks for your reply Emma!


It would make more sense to me if the Attendance score in gradebook would just be able to give them an accurate count of their score out of possible points so far in a semester (90/95), but it gives them the score of attendance dates that haven't even occurred yet. That's the problem the professor (and I) are running into regardless of how I change the settings in the gradebook. It seems like an error in the code - I don't think this has been a problem before. 

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In reply to Elyse Crichton

Re: Attendance & Gradebook don't match

by Dan Marsden -
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Emma is right - if we pushed grades to the gradebook based on the total number of sessions unmarked this would mean that the attendance grade could confuse students even more and bring down their overall average grade within the course quite a lot. This may be what you would like to see, but it's not what other students from other organisations using the attendance would expect.


There is always room for improvement though - feel free to get in touch privately if you would like to fund some improvements to the grade handling to allow the teacher to decide what grade should be pushed to the gradebook.

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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Attendance & Gradebook don't match

by Elyse Crichton -
Thanks for your reply Dan! Maybe I didn't do a good enough job explaining my original issue. My "include empty grades" was an attempt at a solution, but here is the original error:


A professor set up Attendance with max grade of 215 for the entire course - 43 sessions @ 5pts each.

At midterms, only 19 sessions had occurred (95 points possible up to that point). In the Attendance module reports, the student had 90/95 points - accurate, desired result. HOWEVER, the problem was in the gradebook - the attendance grade for this student was 203.68/215. 

I haven't noticed this as a problem before, but the Attendance grade in gradebook was calculating the students' scores based on percentage, not raw points. It was assuming the remaining class sessions were "Present" even though they had not yet occurred.

It seems like a professor would need to create two Attendance modules to work around this - one for the first half and one for the second half, and/or they wouldn't be able to prepopulate the Attendance with all class sessions for the term.


Does that make more sense?

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In reply to Elyse Crichton

Re: Attendance & Gradebook don't match

by Elyse Crichton -

I realize it might be confusing when I say it's "based on percentage," but I'm saying the Gradebook score for Attendance is basically a ratio out of the max score rather than the real, current score - in this case, 90/95. It's saying "Oh, they have a 94.7% currently (90/95), so I'll give them a 94.7% out of the max grade (94.7% of 215 = 203). I hope that adds some clarity.

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In reply to Elyse Crichton

Re: Attendance & Gradebook don't match

by Dan Marsden -
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yeah - unfortunately that's expected behaviour for some sites using attendance - happy to receive funding or pull requests to give more control over what grade is passed to the gradebook.

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In reply to Lisa Wiebenga

Re: Attendance & Gradebook don't match

by Elyse Crichton -
We recently upgraded to Moodle 3.4 and probably updated our Attendance plugin as well. It looks like this issue is fixed now. It will display points taken/points presently possible.


However, it no longer displays future sessions. For example, I added an attendance activity worth 100 points and added 10 recurring sessions on Mondays (10pts each). I can only see this week's and last week's sessions (20 total points). So students have a grade of X/20 instead of X/100.

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In reply to Lisa Wiebenga

Re: Attendance & Gradebook don't match

by Moumita Hazra -
Hello, I want to show "Percentage overtaken sessions value" in another page. Please guide me for the same.
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In reply to Moumita Hazra

Re: Attendance & Gradebook don't match

by Elyse Crichton -

What version of Moodle are you on? When we upgraded to Moodle 3.4 the problem seemed to fix itself. You may also find updating your Attendance fixes the issue.

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