Marty Soupcoff

It looks like you can only select one of those options; at least that is what is on my 1.9 version. A workaround would be to set up a formula in Excel that reads the real grades and then in another column show the letter.

For example, if your real grades start in A2 and go down, in cell B2 enter:

=IF(A2>=89.5,"A",IF(A2>=79.5,"B","F"))

This formula will check the A column and then if it is greater OR equal to 89.5, then it will return an A in column B. It does the same for if the grade is below an 89.5 and then checks to see if it is greater than or equal to 79.5. You could continue these IF statements for the rest of the grades until F. Then copy the formula down the entire sheet to calculate all of the letter grades.

Happy oodling!

I actually agree with you...sort of. Using the example I gave, what if the teacher needed the course total to function like that but for that category of two assignments, they had it equal the actual total max grade for the assignments. Then you would have to do two things.

1. Switch overall aggregation to Weighted
2. Do the math and figure out how much the point total of each assignment is worth towards the course total. This is a flawed method though because if you decide to add another grade item, you would have to re-calculate and enter all the weights.

Or you would have to enter a manual calculation into the course total; which again is not good because you would have to change formula if you add or remove items.

I'll throw out another example. Say you have 4 assignments. Each graded out of 100 but they are not weighted the same. Assignment 1 = 10%, Assignment 2 = 20%, Assignment 3 = 20% and Assignment 4 = 50% of course total. If you had it how you describe of having the course total equally the total points of the assignment, you would get something like this:

Categories and Items

User Report

If you do the math with the weights, you get the percentage of 91% and 91% of 400 is 364. If a student were to add up what they got on the assignments they would get 360.

But say instead you have the course total set to 100, when it does the math with the weights, it then scales down to 100. By scaling to 100, it then looks like a percentage.

Categories and Items

User Report

I think the second method is much better. You could simply have the course total display as a letter/percentage and that would be even better. It wouldn't show the 91 (Real) score.

OR

How about this as a fix; just change the category or course total name. Change from Category Total to Category Average. That way from the end-user point of view, there should be no confusion on what it is

I think when it really comes down to though, the problem is that everyone does their gradebook differently. There is no way to code one method/aggegregation/formula to make it work for everyone without issue. This system allows flexibility to meet everyone's needs though. They just have to make sure they understand how to set it up correctly.

P.S. You mention you don't like aggregations because you don't understand them, if that's the case and you have an instructor at your university who needs help. Feel free to send me a personal email and I can take a look.

Happy oodling!

Could you attach a screenshot of your Categories and Items so I can see which aggregations you got set. Without seeing your screenshot though, I think I can answer your question.

The Sum of Grades aggregation always just takes the max grades and adds them up to get the course total. It's the simplest aggregation and has always worked for me.

If you are using Simple Weighted or Weighted though, it will put a 100 if you had the aggregation set before adding any grade items. If you had grade items in the category and it was previously Sum of Grades and you switched it to Simple Weighted or Weighted, it will take whatever the total was before switching it and set that as the category total. This category total doesn't update as you have shown. Instead what it does is scale to that category total.

So to use your example, the total of the max scores is 60. The student received 35 of those points. It then divides them to get a percentage. (35/60= 58.33%) Since the category total was set to 100, it can simply take that as it already was a percentage. But say your category total was 115. It would take the 58.33% and scale to the 115. (115*58.33%=67.01) So in the category total it would show 67.01 points earned out of 115.

Now that the math is out of the way, I'll explain why (at least why I think it is done that way). Say your course consisted of:

• Assignment 1 - 100 points
• Assignment 2 - 100 points
• Assignment 3 - 100 points
• Assignment 4 - 100 points
• Assignment 5 - 100 points
• Assignment 6 - 100 points

The instructor wants to grade all assignments out of 100 but assignments 2 & 3 combine together and the instructor wants those to only count as 100 together; so the course total should be 500. If you set the course total aggregation to Sum of Grades, create a new category and place assignment 2 & 3 in it and set the aggregation of that category to Simple Weighted. In that category, set the total to 100. The course total will then show as 500 because for assignments 1, 4, 5 & 6 it gets 400 points and from the category of assignments 2 & 3 it only gets 100 points.

Then how it calculates is that points earned for assignments 1, 4, 5 & 6 just add to the total. The category (assignments 2 & 3) will then total and then scale down to 100. So if a student earned 180 points total on assignments 2 & 3, the category total would show 90 out of 100 and that 90 would then go towards the course total.

Example:

Categories and Items

User Report

Happy oodling!

This was brought up in a tracker awhile back. See here. There is a customization that can be installed to get this feature. See the comments at the bottom of tracker ticket and the file attached to tracker.

Happy oodling!

The Advanced Uploading of Files assignment allows you to enable Notes. So if you enabled Notes, students could upload their media file(s) and then in the Notes section, answer any questions you would like them to.

Happy oodling!