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 with point-based grading using Moodle's 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). Courses using weighted mean aggregation (e.g., homework is worth 20%, papers 30%, and the final exam 50%) should see the Extra Credit in Mean-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 extra credit points to a course grade
Suppose your class is set up as shown below. There are two important things to note about this setup:
- The Weights column is inactive, as shown by the unchecked boxes and dimmed number fields. This indicates that the natural aggregation method is being used as a "sum of grades" aggregation method.
- The total course points available is 1000. Your course may have a different number; what's important is that the total course points available listed in this location must remain the same after adding the extra credit items.
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. Mark category as extra credit
After you create your extra credit category, you need to go back into the settings screen for the category and tell Moodle to count is as extra credit.
- In the gradebook setup screen, find your extra credit category and click the three dots located in the same row as the title of your extra credit category to bring up a menu. You will also see a three-dot menu in the same row as the category total, but this is not the menu used to set the category as extra credit.
- From the menu that appears, choose Edit category.
- In the category setup screen, check the Extra credit checkbox, and click the Save changes button at the bottom of the screen.
3. Review category setup
If you have successfully set up your extra credit category, you'll see a plus sign on the category total line.
4. 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.
5. Review extra credit setup
You'll now see your extra credit assignments listed in your extra credit category. There are several things to note:
- Before we added the extra credit category, there were 1000 points available for the class. After adding the extra credit category and assignments, there are still 1000 points available.
- The numbers listed in the weights column will not be used when calculating grades and can be ignored.
- As mentioned above, the plus sign appearing next to the total number of extra credit points indicates that the category is correctly set up.
- There should not be a plus sign next to the maximum points for an individual extra credit assignment.
0 Comments
Add your comment