Creating a grade book category

Grade book categories let you organize and group related grade items into sections. For example, you could have separate categories for Assignments, Quizzes, Case Studies, Participation, Discussions, etc. When grade items are grouped together in a category, you can distribute points equally across all grade items and drop the highest or lowest item in the group.

  1. From the Manage Grades area, click New Category.
  2. Type a Name for the category.
  3. If you want, type a Short Name to display in the grade book.
  4. If you want, type a Description of the category.
    • Select the Allow users to view description check box if you want to make the category description available to users.
  6. If you are using the weighted system, enter the total Weight or percentage that you want the category to contribute towards the final grade.
  7. Set additional options as required and click Save.

Additional grade category options

Option Procedure

Allow users’ grades to exceed the maximum value for the category

Select the Can Exceed check box.

Weighted system example  You create an “Assignments” category that contains two grade items: A1 and A2. Both assignments are worth 50% of the category and can exceed the weight specified. Frank Catcher receives 100% on A1 and 110% on A2. Frank receives 105% in the Assignments category.

Points system example  You create an “Assignments” category that contains two grade items: A1 and A2. Both assignments are out of 10 points and can exceed the maximum points specified. Frank Catcher receives 12/10 and 9/10 on the grade items.

Exclude items in the category from the final grade calculations

Select either:

  • 0% in the Weight field in the weighted system.
  • Exclude from Final Grade Calculation in the points system.

Distribution of weights and points for grade items in the category

For the weighted system select one of:

  • Manually assign weight to items in the category Calculating and setting item weights on your own enables you to control the weighting of individual items independently.
  • Distribute weights by points across all items in the category Uses the points of individual, non-bonus grade items to determine the relative weighting of each item out of 100%.
  • Distribute weight evenly across all items Gives all grade items equal weighting in the category regardless of the number of points the individual item is out of.

For the points or formula system:

  • Distribute points across all items then enter the Points per item and any non-bonus items to drop.

Drop the highest or lowest grade item in a category

Enter the number of items to drop in either:

  • Number of highest non-bonus items to drop for each user
  • Number of lowest non-bonus items to drop for each user

Note  Grades must be distributed evenly to use this option and you cannot drop bonus items.

Change what users see for this category from your standard display settings

Select or clear:

  • Display class average to users
  • Display grade distribution to users

 

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