Create a grading system

As an instructor, you can determine how to set up your grade book to best reflect your approach to evaluation, including the grading system and grade scheme that is most appropriate for your course. You can select how grades display to learners, how they update in the grade book, and how you want to deal with ungraded items. You can create grade items for projects, assignments, discussions, quizzes, etc. to include in your grade book, and even associate them with other tools (e.g. Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions).

Grading concepts

Grade books

A grade book contains your grading system, grade calculations, grade scheme, grade items, and view and display options. Grade items in your grade book represent all the work that you want to evaluate users on in a course. You can evaluate specific tasks such as assignments, tests, and participation, and you can also create grade items and associate them with course objects such as assignments and quizzes.

You must set up a grade book before you can use the Grades tool. As you plan your grade book, consider:

• Which grade items you plan to evaluate.
• Which grading system is most appropriate for your course.
• How you will allocate points or weights across grade items.
• Which grade items you want to associate with course objects. Note that only numeric grade items can be associated with course objects.
• If you want to include a milestone grade at least once during the course.
• How you want to calculate final grades.

Making changes to a grade book's settings and calculation options after you begin tracking users' grades can significantly affect existing data.

Grading system

The grading system determines how the grade items in your grade book contribute to users’ final grades. There are three options:

• Grade items can count as a percentage of a final grade worth 100%.
• Grade items can be worth a certain amount of points that are totaled for a final grade.
• You can define a custom formula for how grade items contribute to a final grade.

Grade items

Grade items in your grade book represent all the work that you want to evaluate users on in a course. Grade items can exist independently in your grade book, or you can associate numeric grade items with course objects such as discussions, quizzes, and assignments. Each grade item has an entry in the grade book, which you assign a grade to for each user. Depending on the grade item type you want to create, grade items can be graded numerically or based on a grade scheme. The grades and feedback you manually enter in your grade book for quizzes, assignments and discussions synchronize automatically with Quizzes, Assignments, and Discussions and appear in those tools as published feedback for learners to view. Review Synchronizing your grade book with other tools for more information.

Grade categories

Grade categories organize and group related grade items into sections in your grade book, for example, a Writing Assignments grade category to group assignment items and a Class Participation grade category to group discussion items. Grade categories display in Manage Grades.

Calculated final grade

The final grade calculated by the grade book. You cannot adjust the final grade without adjusting grade item scores.

Adjusted final grade

You can manually change the final grade calculation without affecting grade item scores.