Definition of terms:

• • • Aggregation: Grade aggregation in eClass is defined as the methods for grouping, weighting, and calculating grade totals.
    • Automatic grading: activities (assignments, quizzes, forums, etc) already added to your course and given a grade in their settings will already appear as columns in your gradebook. Activity grades will automatically appear in your gradebook.
      
      • For quizzes, scoring is mostly automatic; for assignments, you will need to provide scores and feedback for students in the assignment grading interface.
    • Manual grade items: Activities that do not automatically update the gradebook, such as participation marks or class presentations, can be added as manual grade items: Adding Grade Items.
    • Imported grades: if you have a large class and plan on importing grades from a spreadsheet (e.g., from an optically-scored exam), you can either create manual grade items in advance or on the fly during the import process. See the article Importing Grades into the Grader Report for more information.
    • Note: when adding manual grade items to a course, be sure to click 'Add grade item' and not 'Add category.' Using grade categories as grade items can cause problems in calculating grades.
      
      • Grade categories are used to group items by assessment type and, for example, to weigh them together or else to discard empty grades or one or more lowest grades in the category. For more information see Setting Up Gradebook Categories.
         

Weighing and calculating your final grades:

1. To set grade weights and calculations, click on the Grades tab at the top of your course page:

• • • The gradebook page will open.

2. Click on the 'Grader report' dropdown then on 'Gradebook setup' to access the setup page for your gradebook:

3. In the 'Gradebook setup,' click on Edit → Edit settings at the top of the table beside your course's name.

4. The Edit category page will open. Choose an aggregation method for your course in the Grade category section.

• • • If you have set the maximum scores for your assessment items so that they all total up to 100, select Simple weighted mean of grades. You do not need to enter any further weighting information.
      
      

Your gradebook setup should list the maximum grades of each item adding up to 100:

5. Sometimes a grade item has a value too low to provide a useful assessment of a student's performance.

• For example, if you offer a quiz with 50 questions, it may not be useful to assign it a maximum grade of 10 as in the example above. You could instead give the quiz a maximum grade of any value and then set the weight of the grade item to a different value.
• In this example, you could score the quiz out of 50 but have it count toward the final grade with a weight of 10%.
• If you need to weigh certain items differently from their score, select Weighted mean of grades as your aggregation method.
• This method will add a weight column to the 'Gradebook setup.'

6. With the Edit category page open, choose an aggregation method for your course in the Grade category section.

• • • Enter the weighted value for each of your grade items and save changes:
      
      
      
    • For information on the other aggregation methods or for making advanced gradebook calculations, see the article Calculating Your Course Total.

Notes:

You do not have to set aggregation methods at the start of the term. Grade items can be added to your course gradebook throughout the term and once all are present, the aggregation methods chosen to calculate the final grade. If you opt for doing this sort of setup ad hoc, you should review the article Controlling the Visibility of Your Gradebook. Then consider hiding the course total until all the assessment items have been added so that students aren't confused by the 'running total'.