I have professors who are complaining quite loudly about the moodle gradebook because it counts a '-' as a zero, which throws off all of the calculations. Most notably, it creates much lower averages and much higher standard deviations than would normally be calculated by anyone who has ever actually taught and graded a class.
My thinking, and that of the professors here, is that there should not be a "0" assigned automatically by Moodle, ever. If a student hasn't turned in an assignment, then the calculation for that assignment should have its population decremented before the calculations are made. So, if I have 10 students, all of whom got a 100% on the last assignment except for two who haven't turned it in, the average for that assignment should be 100.
It seems that Moodle is doing the exact right things when all students turn in an assignment, but horribly terrible things when there are missing assignments. Can someone explain what's happening and why?
I'm using 1.6 right now, but the behavior appears to be the same in 1.7.
Thanks.
To fight against an incomplete set of grades and the false lowering of grades, I use weighted categories. If the teachers only have a single category they may want to call it graded work. Then when they have graded an assignment they set the category for that assignment or activity (quiz, etc.) to graded. If they want the stats to be right and have graded an assignment but have a couple of students who have valid/excused reasons for not doing the work and the teacher does not want that particular assignment included in the students grade then they should exclude that student from the assignment. I think this will help your teachers get the results that they want. Our school has a policy that a grade that has not been turned in even if it is from an excused absence is a zero until it is completed. I think the current setup allows for the best of both worlds. It is helpful for me and our teachers to have a blank be a zero by default. Perhaps when the gradebook is revamped in 1.9 (as per the roadmap) each course will have a gradebook option that will specify how to treat blank grades. If that does not already exist in the tracker you may wish to consider adding it. Happy Moodling!
Thanks for the input. Manually excluding users from an assignment probably works really well for a class of 20 or 30 students. Unfortunately, I'm in the position of supporting more than one class of 125+ students. So you'd not only have to manually exclude a bunch of people, but you'd have to sift through a large list that resets with every change in order to do it, which would take a decent bit of time.
The consensus here seems to be that professors want to be able to see statistics per assignment, but they'd like to check them on a bit of an ongoing basis. Deadlines are a bit long, and there are lots of students. Being able to see accurrate statistics after, say, 30 submissions, then again at 60, then at 90, for example, would be a good way for them to catch problems early, and be more proactive about how they move forward from there.
Ideally, it'd be great to have a setting in the gradebook preferences that allowed statistics generation to be based only on the people who've handed it in (without my having to exclude 50 or more people). Also, if a "-" really means "0", then just make it a zero!
The consensus here seems to be that professors want to be able to see statistics per assignment, but they'd like to check them on a bit of an ongoing basis. Deadlines are a bit long, and there are lots of students. Being able to see accurrate statistics after, say, 30 submissions, then again at 60, then at 90, for example, would be a good way for them to catch problems early, and be more proactive about how they move forward from there.
Ideally, it'd be great to have a setting in the gradebook preferences that allowed statistics generation to be based only on the people who've handed it in (without my having to exclude 50 or more people). Also, if a "-" really means "0", then just make it a zero!
With regards to the statistics, it seems like a reasonable bug fix for the tracker that it only calculates statistics on existing data. I agree that a - is not a zero and for calculating statistics it should query from the assignment or quiz and then show stats based on that data. The request would be timely as the gradebook is hopefully to be revamped in Moodle 1.9 according to the current Roadmap. I can appreciate the difficulty of having to manually exclude those students in a larger class.