Instructors often choose to award extra credit to students in one of two ways:
- By giving students the opportunity to earn extra points on an assignment. For example, a 20-point problem set with a 1-point bonus question, where students can earn 21 points on the assignment by answering all questions correctly, including the bonus question.
- By adding points to a course grade. For example, an instructor may assign two 1-point extra credit assignments, where students who complete both assignments have their course grades increased by two points at the end of the semester.
Each of these cases is addressed differently, and depends on how the gradebook is set up. This tutorial is for courses graded using categories and weighted mean aggregation (e.g., homework is worth 20%, papers 30%, and the final exam 50%). Courses using points-based natural aggregation (e.g., there are 1000 points available for students to earn over the course of the semester, and their course grade is the sum of points earned divided by 1000) should see the Extra Credit in Points-Based Grading tutorial.
Adding extra credit points to an item
Suppose you offered your students an assignment with a maximum score of 20 points, and included a bonus question worth 1 extra point. In most cases, instructors who do this want to give their students the opportunity to score higher than 20 points on the assignment without penalizing students who don't answer the extra credit correctly. That is:
- Students who do not answer the bonus question correctly but answer all other questions correctly receive a grade of 20 -- a perfect score.
- Students who answer the bonus question correctly and score nineteen points on the other questions receive a grade of 20 -- a perfect score.
- Students who answer the bonus question correctly and answer all other questions correctly receive a grade of 21.
For any student earning a score of 20 or less, students' quizzes can be graded and entered normally into the gradebook. The only case requiring special attention is when a student scores above the maximum grade set for the quiz. In some grading interfaces for Moodle, scoring an item above its maximum grade may result in an error like the one below. If this happens, you'll need to enter the student's score directly in the gradebook. The steps below will explain how to do this.
1. Navigate to Grader Report
- On your Course Menu, click Grades.
- Turn on Edit mode in the upper-right corner of the Grader report screen.
2. Edit scores
- Find the score field for the student's extra credit assignment and enter the desired grade. In the example below, the student is receiving 21 points on a 20-point paper.
- Click Save changes at the bottom of the screen.
3. Review scores
- Turn off Edit mode in the upper-right corner of the Grader Report screen.
- The scores entered this way may have a symbol to indicate that they were "overriden," meaning that they were entered directly into the gradebook.
Adding points to a course grade
There is no straightforward way in Moodle to directly add extra points to a course grade when using mean-based grading. However, you can still assign extra credit items, record students' scores on them, and have those available for students to view in the gradebook. For example, suppose a student's course grade is 80, and that she completed two extra credit assignments each worth one extra point added to her course grade. Using the below method, she'll see her course grade listed in the gradebook as 80, and that she successfully completed 2 points of extra credit. Her actual grade of 82 will not appear in the gradebook, but you and she can both know that her actual grade is the sum of the course grade listed (i.e., 80) and her total extra credit points (i.e., 2).
1. Create extra credit category
- In the gradebook setup screen, click the Add menu in the top right corner of the screen and choose Add category.
- Enter a Category name.
- From the Aggregation drop-down menu, choose Natural.
- Click Save changes at the bottom of the page.
2. Set weight to zero for extra credit category
- Back on the gradebook setup screen, enter 0 in the Weights field for your extra credit category.
- Click Save changes.
3. Create extra credit assignments
Extra credit assignments can now be created. When setting one up, be sure to set its Grade category to the extra credit category you just created.
When editing the settings of an extra credit item, you may see an option to mark the item as Extra credit. Do not mark items as Extra credit. The extra credit category is already functioning to provide extra credit; the extra credit items in that category should not be marked as extra credit.
4. Review item setup
You'll now see your extra credit assignments listed in your extra credit category. There are several things to note:
- The weight for the extra credit category is set to zero, as covered in a previous step.
- You'll see a checkbox and number field for each extra credit assignment. These should be ignored; the unchecked checkboxes and dimmed number fields indicate that the values in the number fields will not interfere with any calculations. The checkboxes should remain unchecked.
- The total number of extra credit points available is listed, which corresponds to the sum of the maximum grades of all extra credit assignments.
5. What the students see
The below picture shows how the gradebook looks to a student when extra credit has been added by the above method:
- The student has received scores equivalent to 80% on all the assignments. Since this course uses a mean-based aggregation method, we expect that he or she will have a grade of 80 in the course without extra credit.
- The student successfully completed both one-point extra credit assignments. According to the syllabus, 2 points will be added to his or her course grade.
- The student's course grade in Moodle is still listed as 80, not 82, but the extra credit is recorded in the grade book and the student knows that he or she will receive a grade of 82 when final grades are entered into Self-Service.
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