I use forums and always read and grade every student post, so I think that I understand your question.
Here are two ideas for you.
1) Don't grade forums. If your teachers are not interested in reading quality student's posts, why fake the grading of these?
2) In the grade book, you could go to the forum item and grade these all at the same time, in single item grading mode. Just enter any score that you would like to give the students.
3) Explore creating a feature request in the Tracker system that will automatically give a student a point whenever they make a post, even if there post is something like: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. "
Since your teachers are not interested in reading what students write, the above "Lorem..." post is as good as any. Right?
It seems you misunderstood my question.
Coordinators are not teachers; they are the administrators who enter the grades.
Faculty (aka teachers) do read and respond to participants on a course forum, encouraging healthy debate on said forum.
However, when the coordinators (aka administrators) need to allocate grades, this can be a time-consuming task and takes away from their time assisting participants during the day.
Thank you for taking the time to respond anyway.
Tracy, maybe I did misunderstand.
When a teacher reads and responds, this is the best time for them to provide a grade (i.e., a "rating.") I don't understand what coordinators have to do about "allocating grades?" I will provide a graphic showing a student's post, and how I have "graded" it.
So yes, "Jane posts to forum and her grade is automatically updated in the Gradeboook." This is how ratings work in Moodle.
I am also going to provide a screenshot showing how I have defined this feature in the Forum edit area.
