Setting A Grade Calculation In Gradebook

Moodle automatically assigns a simple weighted mean of grades to every assignment that is added in a Moodle course. (For example: if a module has 2 assignments, each activity will be weighted 50%)

However, if your assignments are not weighted equally (or you have included activities such as quizzes, workshops etc.), it is possible to create a formula in Moodle to calculate a weighted mean of grades. These final course grades can then be made visible to students.

Creating formulas (or setting a grade calculation) in Moodle follow the pattern of formulas/functions you find in other spreadsheet programmes such as Excel. They all start with an (=) sign, and use common mathematical operators and functions.

Some of the example calculations (p3) may look confusing to start with. If you have a more complex calculation you wish to discuss with us, or have any further questions, you can contact the TEL team on tel@yorksj.ac.uk

Setting a grade calculation

To set a grade calculation:

1. Login to Moodle

2. Click on ‘Gradebook setup’ from the course administration block found in the sidebar of your course.

3. On the course total line section, click on ‘Edit’ and ‘Edit calculation’

4. The Grades: Setup screen will appear. Under the calculation box, enter an ID number for each activity you plan to use in the formula. You can call your ID numbers whatever you like. I have stuck with 1,2,3, but you could call them Portfolio, Assignment etc. (some components may already have ID numbers). Click on ‘Add ID numbers’

5. Type the calculation into the calculation box. (example calculations can be found on the next page). Every Calculation must start with an equal sign (=) and use opening and closing brackets (as you would use in formulas you may do in Excel for example)

6. When entering an ID number into the calculation, this must be surrounded by double brackets.

Example Calculations

Equally weighted components

=average([[1]], [[2]], [[3]])

Weighted grade calculations where item 1 is weighted 30%, item 2 is weighted at 60% and item 3 is weighted at 10%:

=sum([[1]]*0.3,[[2]]*0.6,[[3]]*0.1)

Weighted calculations where the first component is made up of 2 quizzes, which averaged together, are weighted 10% of the overall grade. (In this example, the quizzes are worth a maximum grade of 10, so in order to find the weighted grade of 10%, I first need to get the average, multiply the average of the marks by 10 to get the percentage and then I can multiply that by 0.1 (or 10%) to get the overall mark for that component). The second component is worth 50% (or 0.5) of the overall grade and the third and fourth components are worth 20% (0.2) each. I have highlighted the first component in Purple, second component in yellow, third in blue and forth in grey to help break down the calculation.

=(((([[4]]+[[5]])/2)*10)*0.1)+([[1]]*0.5)+([[2]]*0.2)+([[3]]*0.2)

Once you have typed in your calculation, click the ‘Save Changes’ button

Showing Gradebook to Students

Note: Only show the Gradebook to students once all the grades are in.

Once all your grades have been input, you can show the gradebook to your students by clicking on ‘Edit Settings’ in the administration block on the right hand side. Scroll down and click on ‘Appearance’ then change ‘Show Gradebook to students’ to ‘Yes’.