e-Learning: How To Guides

Why not set up your Moodle Gradebook so that it accurately reflects the assessment elements in your unit. This will enable the export of all the unit grades and course total into an easy-to-read Excel format at the end of the study period ready for input to SAMIS.

For example, there are five assessment elements in a unit, the grades of which need to be weighted as follows:
* Three assignments which constitute 75% of the course total.  Each assignment to be equally weighted within the 75%.
* Two quizzes which constitute 25% of the course total, equally weighted.

By default, all five items will appear in the Grader report in the same overall unit category and their grades will be aggregated by a Simple Weighted Mean of Grades.  This may not calculate the grades as expected. For an explanation of this aggregation see the FAQ at: http://go.bath.ac.uk/dm18.

To weight these assessments will require the creation of two separate categories weighted 75% and 25% and the relocation of the items into the relevant categories.

To see the current grades aggregation:

• Click on Grades in the Administration block to view the Grader Report.
• In the Choose an action dropdown menu (at the top left), select Categories and items: Full view.

To create a new category:

• Click on Add a category (at the bottom of the page).
• Choose a Category name (this will be displayed to students in their individual grade reports so it would be advisable to include the weighting in the category name by way of explanation e.g. ‘Assignments – 75% of total‘).
• Select the Aggregation method.  Choosing Mean of grades will weight all items in the category equally.
• Decide whether or not to Aggregate only non-empty grades. The default in the Gradebook is for only completed, marked work to be included in the aggregation of the course total. Choosing not to do this means that any unmarked, unattempted assessments will be assigned a grade of zero and included in the aggregation of the final course total. The course total will gradually accumulate over the unit’s life.
• Save changes.

To move items into a new category:

• Tick the Select checkboxes in the column on the right.
• In the Move selected items to dropdown list, choose the category where the items need to be moved.
• Repeat for the second category.

To weight categories:

• In the Aggregation column (for the overall unit category) select Weighted mean of grades from the dropdown list.
• A new column labelled Weight will appear, add the weightings for each category (0.75 and 0.25) and Save changes.

To view and export the grades:

To return to the Grader report:  click on Grades in the links at the top left of the page, then Turn editing off.

To view how students will see their assessment grades:  click on View: User report from the Choose an action dropdown list (at the top left).

To check an individual student’s grade report:
* From the front page of the unit, click on Participants in the People Block.
* Find the student in the participants list and click on their name to view their profile.
* Click on the Login as button at the bottom of their profile, then Continue.
* Click on Grades in the Administration block.
* When finished, go back to the front page of the unit and click on your own name in the top right of the Navigation Bar to login as yourself again.

To export the unit grades, feedback and course totals:  see the FAQ at http://go.bath.ac.uk/asn4.

Ideally, when creating quizzes and quiz questions in Moodle you will pre-plan the structure and naming of the elements in your questionbank so that your questions are easy to identify and your quizzes simple to update.

However, the reality is that a questionbank often evolves over a period of time and questions end up falling into the default category for that unit (see Image 1). Tidying up the questionbank in your Moodle unit is fairly straightforward, just take a look at the tips below for advice on:

• creating new question categories
• moving questions to new categories
• renaming questions
• deleting questions and categories

Bear in mind that you can’t add or remove questions to a quiz once students have taken it, but you can rename the questions or alter their question category while they are still in use.

Creating new question categories

Newly created questions will have automatically been added to the ‘Default’ question category for that unit on Moodle.  As the number of quizzes and questions in your Moodle unit increases, it may be wise to manage the structure of your questionbank.  Creating a new question category is simple.

• Click on Questions (in the Administration Block) and then the Categories tab
• You will see all existing question categories and the number of questions currently in that category (see Image 2).
• Click on the ‘Parent‘ dropdown menu and choose ‘Top‘
• Name the question category
• Click on Add Category to save

• It is possible to add sub-categories once you have created Top level categories for the unit (see Image 3)
• Use the delete, edit and move icons to rearrange your question categories

Moving questions to new categories

1. To move individual questions from within the quiz itself.

• Go to the quiz in your Moodle unit
• Click on the Edit tab at the top
• For the question you want to move, click on the Edit icon (pen and paper) in the Action column
• Untick ‘Use this category‘
• Choose the new category from the dropdown list
• Click on the ‘Save changes‘ button at the bottom

2. To move individual or groups of questions from within the question bank

• Click on Questions (in the Administration Block)
• In the Action column, tick the questions to be moved
• In the ‘With selected‘ section at the bottom, use the dropdown menu to choose the new category
• Click on the ‘Move to >>‘ button

Renaming questions

If you decide to rename the quiz questions (see Image 4), your naming convention may want to include:

• author
• question type (eg multiple choice, true/false, cloze)
• topic or other identifying text
• date created

Deleting questions or categories

When you come to delete questions that are no longer needed, remember that you will not be able to do this if students have already attempted the quiz.  You will need to remove all quiz attempts before deleting.

A question category can be deleted from the Categories tab (Administration block, Questions) by clicking on the delete icon (red cross).  You will not be able to delete unless the category is empty of questions and sometimes hidden questions will prevent deletion.  To view hidden questions, click on the Questions tab, tick the checkbox for ‘Also show old questions‘ and then delete from here.

One of the interesting new features that will be coming soon in Moodle 2.0 is the ability to create conditional activities. This will allow teachers to make the availability of activities dependent on conditions such as marks obtained for or the completion of another activity.

While Moodle 2.0 is currently still in development, it is possible (with a little tweaking) to set up something equivalent in the version of Moodle that we are using.   This has been introduced in a first year core Maths unit as a means of making the availability of an assignment submission point dependent on a student submitting correct answers in a quiz. The quiz is used to check that the functions that students have written are correctly calculating the anwers to specific mathematical questions before they are able to hand in their completed code as an assignment. The tutor’s attention is then immediately drawn to those who haven’t submitted and therefore don’t have a working program.

Such conditionality could also be used to require students to:

• check specific understanding of terms/content before opening an online submission point
• confirm understanding of a plagiarism declaration/assessment offences before submitting work
• route students through to differentiated learning resources dependent on their achievement in a test

How to set up a conditional assignment submission point:

• Create an assignment in the very end topic of your unit on Moodle.
  • If you need to change the number of topic sections you have in the course go to Administration, Settings.
  • Click on Save and Display when you’ve completed the set up page and you will see your assignment submission point
  • Copy the URL of the assignment activity you’ve just created from the address bar at the top of the page (eg http://moodle.bath.ac.uk/mod/assignment/view.php?id=156426)
• Create a quiz activity in your course.
  • In the Review Options untick all Answers
  • In Feedback, set the first Grade Boundary as 100% and in the Feedback for this grade add some text such as “Well done, you may now submit your assignment here” and link this to the URL of the assignment activity you copied earlier
  • Set a second Grade Boundary of 99.99% with Feedback “Sorry, you need to answer all questions correctly to be able to submit your assignment”.
  • Set the quiz questions
• Hide the assignment submission point so that students can’t accidentally stumble across it
  • Switch off the Gradebook (in Admin, Settings)
  • Hide the Activities block (Turn Editing On, click on the eye icon at the top of the Activities block)
  • Hide the final topic section of your course (eg in Admin, Settings change the number of topics from 10 to 9 if your assignment has been set up in topic section 10)

Further help and information:

• For more detailed guidance on setting up an assignment see here.
• For help with creating quizzes in Moodle see here.
• Find out more about the conditional activities planned for Moodle 2.0 here.

Overview

The Assignment Activity lets students submit work and allows teachers to give grades and feedback in Moodle.  This document will guide you through the process of giving feedback and marks for assignments submitted online via Moodle.  Information in italics will include pointers on administrative and procedural questions that you might want to take into account.

Screenshots that highlight the information below are available to download as a PDF.

Finding the submitted work

You can access your assignments for marking from one of two locations:

* At the assignment submission point in the Topic or Week where the assignment activity was added
* In the Activities block (usually found to the left), click on Assignments to see all assignment activities for that unit

Once the Assignment Activity is open, click on View submitted assignments (top right) to go to the list of submitted work.

Marking submitted assignments:

1. If the unit participants have been organised into groups then clicking on the separate (visible) groups dropdown list will let you choose to view only one group of students – no need to search through the whole cohort for work that needs marking.
2. Clicking on the column headings will reorder information, so sorting by Status will separate out unmarked work.
3. Click on file names to open a file.  If you want to save a file: right-click on the file name and select ‘Save link as’ or ‘Save target as’ (depending on your web browser) and browse for a location to save.
4. If you have a large number of files to download you might want to use the Firefox Add On ‘DownThemAll’ to download multiple files at once.  More information on how to do this is available in the Moodle FAQs here.
5. If you only need to add grades and comments, tick the box to Allow quick grading. Then Save preferences to move to the quick grading screen. The quick grading screen lets you grade and comment on all submitted assignments for that unit (group) in one marking session without having to save each and move to a new screen.

Using the grading screen:

There are several approaches you can take to providing grades and feedback:
* Add a grade or comment only
* Add a grade and comment
* Upload a standard feedback sheet (in Word) as a Response File
* Download the submitted work, annotate it with feedback and then re-upload as a Response File

1. Add grades through the dropdown menu and comments in the text box. Customised Grade Scales can be created in the settings to reflect the mark scheme for the assignment.
2. If the assignment activity has been hidden from students they will not be alerted that their work has been marked.   If the assignment has not been hidden for marking, untick Send notification emails if you don’t want students to be sent an email that links them back to their grades as the work is marked.
3. Save and show next takes you to the next unmarked assignment.
4. Upload a feedback sheet or annotated work as a Response file.  Note: for this response file to be visible to the student, you must have added a grade and written something in the comments.

Remember to switch back on the grade book for the unit and unhide the assignment submission point in order to make grades and feedback available to students.  Students will not now be emailed automatically to alert them to feedback at this point. However, adding a post about the return of grades in the News Forum will email this message to all participants.

Further information on using the assignment activity in Moodle

If you are thinking of setting up an Assignment Activity in Moodle, more information can be found here.

The paper ‘Factors to consider for the effective use of the Moodle assignment activity in online submission of work‘ is available on Opus.

Assignment activity FAQs are available here: http://go.bath.ac.uk/bxs6

General FAQs about using moodle.bath.ac.uk can be found at: http://moodle.bath.ac.uk/faq/

There is also support available from the Moodle community:
* Documentation on the assignment activity module: http://go.bath.ac.uk/lmoc
* FAQs about the assignment activity: http://go.bath.ac.uk/mozi
* User forum with answers to questions about the assignment activity: http://go.bath.ac.uk/dr77

Overview of the assignment activity

The Assignment Activity lets students submit work and allows teachers to give grades and feedback in Moodle.  This guide will lead you through the process of setting up online submission of work through an advanced uploading of files.  Information in italics will include pointers on administrative and procedural questions that you might want to take into account during the set up.

Setting up an assignment activity

• Go to the unit on Moodle where you want to add the assignment
• At the top right of the page or in the Administration block Turn editing on
• Within the Week or Topic where you would like to add the assignment, open the Add an activity drop-down menu
• Choose the Advanced uploading of files option
• Complete the assignment settings (as outlined in the information and diagram below)
• Scroll to the bottom of the page and Save

It is recommended that you use Advanced uploading of files because this gives the most flexibility in the use of assignment activity in terms of multiple file uploads, submissions of drafts, feedback and resubmissions.

Assignment Settings

A diagram of the information below on how to set up your assignment activity is available here to download as a PDF.

• Assignment Name/Description: are elements with an asterisk and highlighted in red, so must be completed
• Description: The description box gives you a space where detailed submission instructions can be highlighted for students.  Many departments include in this section: requirements about file types, naming conventions, cover sheet details, statements about plagiarism, information about when and how feedback will be provided to students.
• Due date: set your assignment deadline here
• Prevent Late submissions: Decisions on late submissions tend to vary from department to department.  If late submissions are prevented completely then online resubmission will not be possible.  However, if they are allowed, then students will be able to overwrite their work after the deadline has expired.  To allow for a ‘soft’ deadline, some courses allow late submissions but take a back-up copy of the assignment straight after the deadline so that there is a reference point for checking that files have not been changed.
• Maximum size: File sizes are important when dealing with digital content such as images, audio or video.  You may also need to amend the maximum file upload settings for the whole unit via the Settings link in the Administration block.
• E-mail alerts to teachers: If you enable the e-mail alerts to teachers, every member of staff with teacher access assigned for this unit on Moodle (all teachers and administrators) will be sent an e-mail alerting them to every file uploaded to this assignment activity.  Most units leave this switched off and send a reminder e-mail directly to tutors (with marking to complete) once the deadline has passed.

Further information on using the assignment activity in Moodle

• Guidance on grading assignments and giving feedback is available here: http://go.bath.ac.uk/3vzb

• The paper ‘Factors to consider for the effective use of the Moodle assignment activity in online submission of work‘ is available on Opus.

• Assignment activity FAQs are available here: http://go.bath.ac.uk/bxs6
  • General FAQs about using moodle.bath.ac.uk can be found at: http://moodle.bath.ac.uk/faq/

• There is also support available from the Moodle community
  • Documentation on the assignment activity module: http://go.bath.ac.uk/lmoc
  • FAQs about the assignment activity: http://go.bath.ac.uk/mozi
  • Users forum with answers to questions about the assignment activity: http://go.bath.ac.uk/dr77