Grading Categories

Grades from various activities (here referred to as grade items) in a Moodle course can be grouped into grading categories. The overall grade in a category is calculated from the individual grades of the grade items that belong to that category.

In every Moodle course, there is automatically a top-level grading category, which takes the course title as its name and combines all grading aspects and any sub-categories into an overall course grade.

Gradebook Setup

Gradebook Setup
Gradebook Setup

An overview of the available grade items and categories can be found in the “Gradebook Setup”.

For this, click on the “Grades” tab in the top navigation bar and then select “Gradebook Setup” from the dropdown menu.

The “Gradebook Setup” overview page shows you the available grade items and categories, their respective maximum grades, and weights.

Existing categories can be edited by clicking on the three dots in the “Actions” column. To add your own category, click on “Add category”.

Settings for the Grading Category

This will open the settings menu for a new grading category. We recommend to click on “Show more …” to display additional settings.

Once you have done this, you can access all the available settings for the grading category.

Expanded Settings
Expanded Settings

Next, we will briefly go over the respective parameters and explain them.

First, you need to assign a name to the category.

The next item, “Aggregation”, determines how the individual grading items within the category are combined to create an overall grade for the category. The grades of the individual grade items are first converted into percentages (a number between 0 and 1), then combined according to the selected aggregation method. The overall result is then converted so that the final grade for the category falls within the range between the minimum grade (0) and the maximum grade (1-100) for the category.

In the table Types of Aggregation (see below), all the aggregation methods for calculating your overall results are listed with a brief example.

With “Exclude Empty Grades”, you can specify whether ungraded or unsubmitted assignments should be ignored or automatically graded as 0. By default, empty grades are excluded from the overall grade. If you check the box, missing grades will be ignored when calculating the overall grade. Please note that this may affect the overall grade depending on the aggregation method used.

The setting “Drop the Lowest” allows you to specify whether a set number of the lowest grades should be excluded from the final calculation.

The next item, “Category Total Name”, is the name that represents the total grade for the grading category. This also appears in the Grading Overview.

Item Info” is an optional field where you can add additional information regarding the overall grade. This is not visible to students.

By entering an ''ID Number'', you can uniquely identify this category and use it for grade calculation. This is also optional.

The settings for grade type, scale, maximum grade and minimum grade are set directly in the respective grade item and cannot be changed here.

The “Grade to pass” option sets the minimum grade required to pass. This value is used only in the activity and course completion settings.

In “Grade Display Type”, you define how the grades are displayed to participants in their grading overview (e.g., letter, points, percentages).

The setting “Overall Decimal Places” determines how accurately the result is displayed to participants. This does not affect the precision of the grade calculation.

Finally, you can set a “Weight” for the respective category. To do this, you must check the box and enter a value between 0 and 100 in the field below. This only has an effect if the category is a subcategory at the same time.

On the overview page, you can assign a grade item to a category by checking the box next to the grade item and clicking “Move ” (at the bottom of the page).

Overall Grade Explanation Example
Mean of grades The sum of the individual grades is divided by the number of grades. A1 = 70/100, A2 = 20/80, A3 = 10/10
Maximum Grade for the Category: 100
(0.7 + 0.25 + 1.0) / 3 = 0.65 --> 65/100
Weighted mean of grades Each grading aspect within the category can be assigned a weight to describe its importance for the overall category grade. The individual grades are multiplied by their respective weights, then summed up and finally divided by the sum of the weights. A1 = 70/100 Weight 10, A2 = 20/80 Weight 5, A3 = 10/10 Weight 3
Maximum Grade for the Category: 100
(0.7 * 10 + 0.25 * 5 + 1.0 * 3) / (10 + 5 + 3) = 11.25 / 18 = 0.625 --> 62.5 / 100
Simple weighted mean of grades The weight of a grading aspect is chosen to be equal to the maximum grade of that aspect. This means, for a grading aspect where a maximum of 100 points can be achieved, the weight will be 100, and for a grading aspect where a maximum of 80 points can be achieved, the weight will be 80, and so on.

With this option, it is possible to count a grading aspect as a bonus within this category. In this case, the weight of this aspect is not included in the total sum by which the values are divided. For example, in the calculation above, grading aspect A3 is marked as a bonus. The corresponding calculation is:
A1 = 70/100, A2 = 20/80, A3 = 10/10
Maximum Grade for the Category: 100
(0.7 * 100 + 0.25 * 80 + 1.0 * 10) / (100 + 80 + 10) = 100 / 190 = 0.526 --> 52.6 / 100

A1 = 70/100, A2 = 20/80, A3 = (Bonus) 10/10
Maximum Grade for the Category: 100
(0.7 * 100 + 0.25 * 80 + 1.0 * 10) / (100 + 80) = 100 / 180 = 0.556 --> 55.6 / 100
Mean of grades (with Bonus Points)
Each grading aspect has a bonus factor greater than or equal to zero. For all grading aspects with a bonus factor of 0, the average is calculated. For grading aspects with a bonus factor greater than 0, the grade is multiplied by the respective bonus factor. All the results are then summed up. This function is no longer officially supported!
Median of grades
The grades of the grading aspects are sorted by size. The median lies in the “middle”, meaning that the number of grading aspects with higher grades is exactly equal to the number of grading aspects with lower grades. The advantage of this method is that outliers do not have as much of an impact as they do with the traditional average. A1 = 70/100,
A2 = 20/80,
A3 = 10/10,

Maximum Grade for the Category: 100

0.7 + 0.25 + 1.0 --> 0.70 --> 70/100
Lowest grade The lowest grade of all grading aspects within the category is selected. A1=70/100, A2=20/80, A3=10/10,
Maximum Grade for the Category: 100

min(0.7,0.25,1.0) = 0.25 --> 25/100
Highest grade The highest grade of all grading aspects within the category is selected. A1=70/100, A2=20/80, A3=10/10,
Maximum Grade for the Category: 100

max(0.7,0.25,1.0) = 1.0 --> 100/100
Mode of grades The grade that occurs most frequently is selected. This method is often used for non-numerical grades. Outliers do not affect the result with this method. A1=70/100, A2=35/50, A3=20/80, A4=10/10, A5=7/10

Maximum Grade for the Category: 100
mode(0.7, 0.7, 0.25, 1.0, 0.7) = 0.7 --> 70/100
Natural The grades of all grading aspects are summed and then divided by the sum of all maximum grades. A1=70/100, A2=20/80, A3=10/10:
(70+20+10) / (100+80+10) = 100/190