Scales

Scales are a way of evaluating or rating a students’ performance. Moodle offers a standard set of numeric scales, as well as the ability for you to create custom scales. Scales may be used with any activity that includes grading settings (assignments, quizzes, forums, etc.).

To Check Available Scales: From within your Moodle gradebook, click on the Scales link from the top left dropdown menu and check to see if the scale you need is already created. If not, contact Educational Media Technologies, or follow the “Creating a Scale” instructions further down this page:

Creating a Scale

If your desired scale doesn’t exist (check carefully; we have a lot!), you can create your own.

Step 1: At the top of the Scales page in the Grades section of your course, click on the Add a new scale button and fill in the Name.

Step 2: In the Scale box, create your scale, separating each item by a comma. You must order the comma separated elements in increasing order of value. For example, an A, B, C, D scale must be entered as D, C, B, A.

Step 3: Fill in the Description box with a detailed description of the scale. Your students will have access to the description. The more detail you put into the description the more students will understand what each scale item means:

Step 4: When finished, click the Save changes button at the bottom of the page.

NOTE: If the scale you want to create is one that you need to use across several course sections, ask Educational Media Technologies to create the scale for you as a site-wide scale.

Selecting a Scale

Step 1: When creating an Assignment, go to the Grade section of the settings; for a Forum, go to the Whole forum grading or the Ratings section of the settings; for a Glossary, go to the Ratings section of the settings.

Step 2: Click the Type drop down menu and select Scale. Scroll through the list of available scales and make your selection by clicking on it:

NOTE: For Ratings, you must first select an Aggregate type before Type will appear.

Step 3: When finished, scroll down and click on the Save and return to course button at the bottom of the page.

Letters

Letter grades represent a range of grades. For example, 100-93% is an A, 92.99-88% is an A-, etc. You can adjust these representations to reflect your grading percentages. Note: You can also change the Letter to a 4.0 scale by adding 4.0, 3.5, 3.0, 2.5, etc.

Overriding the Default Letter Grade Scale

The letter grade default settings in Moodle may not align with the letter grade designations for your department or course. If that is the case, you can override those default settings.

Step 1: From within the Grades dashboard link in your Moodle course, click on the Grade Letters link from the top left dropdown menu:

Check to see if the default matches your desired letter grade scale. If not:

Step 2: Click the Edit tab and click the check mark for Override site defaults and then adjust the Grade letters settings to your course’s requirements. When finished, click the Save changes button at the bottom of the page:

Show Letter Grades to Students

Step 1: To show students a letter grade when they check their grades in your course, click on the Grades dashboard link in your Moodle course and select Course grade settings from the top left dropdown menu:

Step 2: Under Grade item settings, use the drop-down menu for Grade display type to select Letter, Letter (percentage), Letter (real):

Step 3: When finished, click the Save changes button at the bottom of the page.

For Moodle help, contact the NMC Technology Helpdesk at 231-995-3020