Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning, University of Wyoming

Latest revision: 18 August 2011; RKH

WyoSakai Grading

For the overarching document, see Instructions for Standard Teaching Tasks in WyoSakai, and the WyoSakai Help files.

Overview and Planning

The Gradebook Tool maintains gradeable items, both manually-added and automatically-added (through Tests & Quizzes, Assignments, forums).

• Decide on your grading strategy. Will you use categories for subcomputations and weighting, or a flat list of items with individual weights and point values?
• If you want to use a grading scale, develop it.
• Decide how would you like the Gradebook to look, in terms of item order and grouping.
• Add the Gradebook tool.

Viewing Gradable Items and Grade Data

  A gradeable item appears as a column in the Gradebook's student roster, with the students' entries as rows. 

To focus on the gradeable items

Gradebook Item Summary, for all or for an single assignment, shows overall settings and individual grades, paging through if desired.

To focus on student records

All Grades: The whole spreadsheet
Course Grades: The final results (for submission)

Adding Gradeable Items and Entering Grades

Add new gradeable items in Gradebook Items, with the "Add Gradebook Item" link.  Edit and delete gradeable items in sthe same interface. Assignments, Forums, and Tests & Quizzes (if created with the "Add item to Gradebook" option) make their own entries in the Gradebook.

Enter grades for an item, also in the Gradebook Items screen, by clicking item title and filling out the column of fields. (Tests & Quizzes, Assignments, and Forums are graded via those tools.)

Specific Tasks

To show your students their grades so far:

The "Calculate Course Grades" button will (1) convert null entries in student records to zeroes for the gradebook items that are included in the course grade, and (2) compute student grades using all the data entered so far.  On all future work, you could UNcheck "Include this item in course grade settings" (under "Edit gradebook item settings" for each item), so that those null items wouldn't convert to zeroes.

To set the grading scale:

Use the Course Grade Options link.

To designate items from the course grade:

Set up a Category for those items, then exclude give it a weight of 0%.

To change the order of appearance in list:

Click column heading "Sorting" and rearrange, then Save Current Order button. You can still sort on other columns, and go back to chosen with Sorting column heading.

To perform complicated computations:

Export into spreadsheet, work there, import back into course site.

To grant a TA the authority to grade an exam:

The course must have sections or groups defined first (through the "Sections" tool or the Manage Groups link in the "Site Editor").  Then the TA will appear on the list of possible graders in the Permission Setting in the Gradebook, and rules (privileges) may be added.

To override a student grade already entered in the gradebook:

If the gradebook item was created in Assignments, go through that tool to do it (click "Grade" under each student name);

If the gradebook item was created in the Gradebook itself, go through the "All Grades" option and click on the "Detail" link;

If the gradebook item was created in Tests & Quizzes, go through that tool to do it (click on the "Scores" link and enter an adjustment factor, positive or negative, which will be added to the score).

To display student percentages without letter grades:

Set up a Category called "Overall" and give it 100% of the grading weight.  Then edit each Gradebook Item, to add it to that category (of course, you could assign them as the Gradebook items were created).  Turn off "Display course grade."  The "Overall" category serves as a summary of the grades, and its value, a percentage, shows under its label.

As a simpler option, switch to Pass/Fail in Course Grade Options, and just set the pass percentage at some reasonable level; students will see "P" or "F" grades.

To grade discussions:

Forums

The Forums tool has always been integrated with the Gradebook.
 

Discussion Forums

With the 2.6 release of the CLE, the Discussion Forums tool supports grading of student participation in discussions.  You may set up grading either by forum or by topic.
 

• When you grade by forum, you assign a single overall score and set of comments to all of a student's topics and replies within the forum. If you associate this work with the Gradebook, the forum title becomes the gradebook entry name.

• When you grade by topic, you assign a separate score to a student's participation in each topic in the forum. If associated with the Gradebook, each topic becomes a separate gradebook entry. This option is useful if you assign and grade discussion topics weekly.

To set up grading in the Discussion Forums tool, access the tool and proceed as follows:
 

1. Click Manage.
2. Choose Forums from the Forum Admin menu.
3. Click to edit the appropriate forum.
4. Scroll down to the Grading section near the bottom of the screen and choose Enabled.
5. When the CLE displays additional fields, choose either By Forum or By Topic and--for grading by forum only--specify the maximum number of points to be allotted.
6. Click  Update.
7. To grade by topic: Access the appropriate forum and topic and click the Edit button. Near the bottom of the Editing screen, click Yes for Grade Topic and specify the maximum number of points to be allotted. Click Submit to finish.

Note:  You may prefer the Gradebook2 tool.  Please ask Instructional Computing about that option.