NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

The eClass Gradebook allows you to manage and organize a collection of grades in eClass. Items that have been assessed using an eClass activity will be automatically added to the gradebook. For example, if you add an Assignment activity to receive student papers, the assignment grades will be added to the gradebook.

The eClass Gradebook also allows you to add manually-graded items for offline activities such as TSQS-scored exams, class presentations, or participation. You can specify the method for calculating and weighting your assessment items and then tailor how these grades are displayed to your students.

Setting up your gradebook:

To set up your gradebook, follow these steps:

From your course main page, specify the following initial gradebook settings to ensure your grades are displayed properly to students:

1. Click on the Settings tab at the top of your course page:

2. Scroll down to the 'Appearance' settings area and ensure that Show students their own grades is set to Yes.

• • • Students will be able to access only their own grades.
      
      
      
      

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

• 1 To select an aggregation method
• 2 Weighted mean of grades (recommended)
• 3 Simple Weighted Mean (recommended)
• 4 Mean of grades
• 5 Natural
• 6 Other less utilized methods of aggregation
•  - Mean of grades with extra credit
•  - Median of grades
•  - Lowest grade
•  - Highest grade
•  - Mode of grades

To select an aggregation method:

1. Go to the Grade administration page by clicking on Grades in the navigation panel, near the top left corner of the page.
   
   
   
   
2. Alternatively, to access the Grade administration page, you can also click on the gear icon on your course main page, then select Gradebook setup.
   
   
   
   
3. Once you are on the Grade administration page, make sure you are in the Gradebook setup tab, under the Setup tab. Open the dropdown menu as shown in the screenshot below by clicking on Edit, then on Edit settings.
   
   
   Note: The weight column will only appear if you have selected 'Weighted mean of grades' or 'Natural' as your aggregation method.
   
   
4. Choose the method for calculating the final grades in your course in the Aggregation dropdown menu.
   
   

There are four main aggregation methods and each method calculates the course total slightly differently. eClass has other aggregation methods but most of them are not usually used for post-secondary course total calculations. They might be used for calculating totals for any sub-categories in your gradebook in cases where only certain grades require a specific calculation. For example, you could use the 'Highest grade' aggregation when you want students to receive a participation-type score for a series of pre-lecture assignments delivered throughout the term. See the article Setting up Gradebook Categories for more information on this process.

Here is a full description of the four main/recommended aggregation methods in eClass:

Weighted mean of grades (recommended) - Each graded item is assigned a weight. This weight is used to determine the relative value of each item in the overall course total. Weights can be assigned as fractions totalling 1 or integers totalling 100 (an item's calculated weight is the specified weight divided by the sum of all item's weights).

You could, for instance, grade all of your assignments, activities, and quizzes out of 100 each but assign each a weight towards the final grade.

Note: If a grade for an item were out of 100, be careful to assign a grade out of 100 and not out of the weight set for the item. If an item were graded out of 100 but weighted at 30% of the final grade, and if you marked it as if it were out of 30, the grade for that item would be worth only 3/10s of its intended value.

Example

Grades: A1 = 70/100, weight 10; A2 = 20/80, weight 5; A3 = 10/10, weight 3; Course total max 100; sum of weights 18
Aggregation: (0.7*10 + 0.25*5 + 1.0*3)/18 = 0.625 * 100 = 62.5%.
Course Total will be displayed as: 62.50 (Range: 0-100)

To enter the weightings for particular items:

Once you have chosen Weighted mean of grades as the aggregation method, type the weightings beside each activity. Weightings can be applied to individual items or entire categories of items. Within a category, you are also able to determine how much each individual assignment is worth within each category (if you set the aggregation method on the category to Weighted mean of grades). Once complete, click on the Save changes button.

Simple Weighted Mean (recommended) - The difference between this aggregation method and 'Weighted mean of grades' is that the weight of each item is simply its maximum grade. A 100 point assignment has a weight of 100; a 10 point assignment has a weight of 10; items with higher total scores are weighted greater. This is the simplest method to set up, especially if you can match your syllabus breakdown for assessment items to their total in eClass, ie. Assignment 1 counts 20% out of final grade so is its maximum score in eClass is 20.

Example

Grades: A1 = 70/100, A2 = 20/80, A3 = 10/10, category max 100; total points: 190
Aggregation: (0.7*100 + 0.25*80 + 1.0*10)/190 = 0.5263 * 100 = 52.63%
Course Total will be displayed as: 52.63 (Range: 0-100)

Mean of grades - Each graded item is converted to a percentage. The overall grade is a simple average of these percentage values. Each item (regardless of points) has the same weight. The result will be displayed as a point value out of 100 points.

Example

Grades: Assignment 1 = 70/100, Assignment 2 = 20/80, Assignment 3 = 10/10, category max 100
Aggregation: (0.7 + 0.25 + 1.0)/3 = 0.65 * 100 = 65%.
Course Total will be displayed as: 65 (Range: 0-100)

Natural (Sum of grades) - Grade is based on total points – each graded item has a number of points that contributes to the total points. A student’s grade is the number of points earned divided by the total points. This is the only type that does not convert the grades to percentages internally (normalization). The course total is the sum of the maximum grades from all aggregated items.

When using the Natural aggregation method, it's important to note that:

• The faculty grade book shows point totals, not percent. The student report shows point totals and percent.

Example

Grades: A1 = 70/100, A2 = 20/80, A3 = 10/10: total possible points: 190, then
Aggregation: 70 + 20 + 10 = 100
Course Total will be displayed as: 100 (Range: 0-190)

To enter the weightings for particular items:

Once you have chosen Natural as the aggregation method, the relative weighting of each grade item will be displayed in the Weights column. These weights can be manually adjusted by checking the box next to a grade's weight and entering a new value. After selecting Save changes, the other grade items' weights will automatically re-adjust themselves to total 100.

Other less utilized methods of aggregation:

Mean of grades with extra credit - Normal aggregation using the mean method is used but with the addition of a multiplier that can provide bonus points for particular items. Extra credit can also be added on individual grade items within categories in the standard aggregation methods.

Median of grades - The overall grade is the middle grade (or the mean of the 2 middle grades) when the grades are normalized and arranged in numeric order.

Lowest grade - The overall grade is the lowest grade, after normalization.

Highest grade - The overall grade is the highest grade, after normalization.

Mode of grades - The overall grade is the grade that occurs the most frequently, after normalization.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

Controlling the release of grades

To control when students see the grades for their assignments there are three main options:

1. Hide the entire assignment during grading - this is accomplished by clicking Edit > Hide to the right of the assignment on the course main page. Using this method will prevent students from seeing the assignment entirely so it should not be used if late submissions are required.

2. Hiding the assignment from the gradebook - this is accomplished by entering the gradebook Grader report view and clicking Turn editing on near the top right, then clicking the eyeball icon in the column of the assignment in question. Using this method will allow still allow students to submit late but hides any grading information; the entire column is removed from the student's view of the gradebook.

3. Enabling the Marking Workflow in the assignment settings offers the most flexibility for graders. It allows you and other graders in a course to set a status on assignments as grading work is completed. This can be useful when multiple people are working in the same course and assessment needs to be standardized, reviewed, and/or there is a need to coordinate the release of grades to students.

Enable marking workflow

• The workflow is added under the 'Grade' area in assignment settings by setting Enable marking workflow to Yes.
  
  

Marking status

• Once enabled, the available grading statuses are 'Not marked', 'In marking', 'Marking completed', 'In review', 'Ready for release', and 'Released'. When the workflow is enabled, grades and feedback are hidden from students until the grading status on their assignment is set to 'Released'. All the other statuses are only for the information of graders. These statuses do appear on each student's 'Assignment submission' page (where it is visible as a separate status from the regular assignment submission status).
  
  
  
  
• The grading status can be set or changed by graders in a few ways:
  
  • In the 'Marking workflow state' dropdown in the grading area for individual assignments when adding grades and feedback to individual assignments (accessed from the 'View/grade all assignments' area of the assignment by clicking the pencil icon in the grade column or Edit > Grade in the Edit column):
    
    
    
    
  • In the assignment grading table ('View/grade all assignments') in the 'Status' column as a dropdown box below the submission status:
    
    

Bulk or mass release of grades

• The last method, and cleanest way to do a mass release of grades, is via a bulk operation on the assignment grading table (available through View/grade all submissions):
  • Select all or some of the rows in the table.
    
    
    
    
  • Scroll to the bottom and change the 'With selected...' dropdown to Set marking workflow state then click Go and Yes when asked to verify that you want to Set marking workflow state for all selected assignments?.
    
    
    
    
  • The page will now list the students selected (or the first few along with the line 'X more...') - select the desired 'Marking workflow state' from the dropdown and click Save changes.
    
    
    
    
  • You can also optionally choose to send a mass notification to students at this time that their assignments are graded by toggling 'Notify students' to Yes before saving changes.
    
    
    
    

Hide identity of graders

Instructors may hide the identity of graders from students. This would normally be used when courses want all student feedback about assignment scores to come from a single source that has already been announced.

Anonymous (Blind) Grading

If the marking workflow is being used in conjunction with Anonymous Grading (blind marking), student identities must be revealed before any grades will be visible to students.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

• 1 Individual Access Restrictions
• 2 Setting Overrides
• 3 Setting Different SEM Durations
• 4 Setting Overrides in ExamLock
• 5 Setting Up Multiple ExamLock Sessions

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

For students who require special conditions for taking a quiz or submitting an assignment, instructors can create a user or group override that changes the settings only for those particular users.

Overrides can be useful in cases where students need a bit longer to complete a quiz if, for example, a student has a computer crash while completing a quiz and needs an extension to the quiz time limit to complete it fairly; or they require additional time to complete an assignment due to an illness. Overrides are also helpful for instructors who need to apply time accommodations for accessibility purposes during exams.

Group overrides can be useful if you have a multi-section course with different submission dates or times for each different cohort.

Note that for group overrides: You must already have groups created in the course to use the group override functionality.

Adding a user or group override allows you to keep the same quiz or assignment and add as many different overrides as required for particular students. All other students complete the quiz or assignment with the original quiz settings.

Note that if your entire class is affected, change the Timing or Availability by extending BOTH the duration and closing time or due date in the tool settings.

Create a user or group override for a quiz:

1. Enter your course and click on the quiz or assignment you would like to create an override for. Any existing overrides are alreay displayed on the quiz main page.
2. Then click on the More tab, then on Overrides. 
   
   
   
   
3. Select the override type you need, then click on Add user override or Add group override.
   
   
   
   
4. Select a user or group in your course:
   
   
5. Make changes to the quiz delivery settings as required.

• Important Note: when changing the quiz settings for a time accommodation override, instructors must ensure they match the timing setup settings for the main quiz.
• This means that if your main quiz timing has BOTH start/close times AND a time limit applied, any override that you add for a student must adjust both of those for each student.
• For example, if your quiz opens at 1:00 pm, closes at 2:00 pm, AND has a time limit of 60 minutes, if you give a student an override that only gives them a 90 minute time limit, the student's attempt will close at the original close time, regardless of the extended time limit. You must also extend the close time. 

Handling quiz attempts that are submitted prematurely:

Changing the closing time and time limit settings will not re-open attempts that have already been submitted, either by the student or automatically because the closing time was reached. This also applies for exam attempts submitted by ExamLock. In these cases, adding an override (as shown above) and changing the 'Attempts allowed' to 2 would start a brand new attempt (which may be a desired option).

But if a student requires more time to continue and complete their existing attempt 'Attempts allowed' must be set to 2 AND the setting in the quiz settings 'Each attempt builds on the last' must be set to Yes.

Changing this setting for the entire quiz will have no affect on other students because it will only take effect for the students given the second attempt through the override.

Click on the Settings tab in the quiz and scroll down to the 'Question behaviour' section.

Click 'Show more' to access the setting Each attempt builds on the last, and set it to Yes:

Create a user or group override for assignments:

Adding overrides to Assignments is the same except for the different settings options available:


Editing overrides:

• When you re-enter the 'Overrides' interface, any existing overrides will be listed on the Quiz page and on the overrides page.
• You can adjust the quiz or assignment delivery details for an override by clicking the gear icon to the right of the override.
• You can remove an override completely by clicking the trash icon to the right of the override.
• The "copy" icon can be used to copy an override to another user.
• If an error message similar to the following displays after inputting an override, it is likely indicating that a quiz availability setting has superseded the override rule(s), i.e., the quiz is hidden at the course level. This is a warning only and will not impact the override once the superseding condition is removed.

Other notes:

• The interface for entering Group overrides is the same as for User overrides: any changes specified to all members of that particular group (Groupings are NOT required to limit changes to a particular group).

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

• 1 Repairing ambiguous or unfair questions
•  - Special note for embedded (Cloze) answers
• 2 To re-grade quiz attempts
• 3 To delete quiz attempts
• 4 To force submit quiz attempts
• 5 Note

Repairing ambiguous or unfair questions:

After your students have completed a quiz, if you find that it contained an unfair question (e.g., the answer was coded wrong, the question was too ambiguous, etc.) you can either:

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

• 1 Managing Entire Exam sessions
• 2 Adding extra time (global)
• 3 Locking sessions
• 4 Viewing session activity
• 5 Managing individual students
• 6 Reviewing Student Attempt Activity

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

The assignment tool has a wide range of configuration options that make it a powerful tool for assessing students. It can be especially useful in large course sections where there are several options available to streamline working with a high number of submissions. (For a basic walkthrough of the assignment settings, please see Adding Assignments.)

Advanced Assignment Settings

The different areas of advanced settings available for grading assignments are described below with links out to articles specifically covering those topics:

• Allowing Group Submissions

  - Enables students to submit a single assignment per group and provide grades and feedback to the entire group as a whole

• Downloading all assignment file submissions at once

  - Download a zipped folder of all student file submissions for offline grading

• Uploading Multiple Feedback Files at once

  - After working offline and entering comments into student file submissions, you can upload them in one batch

• Using the Marking workflow to release grades to students at the same time

  - Grading high volume assignments can be managed by adding a workflow option allowing for review, tracking, and timed release of grades

• Using Marker allocation to divide grading work among your instructors and TAs

  - With the grading workflow enabled, you can assign subsets of submissions to TAs and other instructors in your course for grading

 

Grading Assignments

Providing students with grades and feedback using the assignment activity is covered in the following series of articles:

• Grading Student Assignments

• Downloading Assignment Submissions

• Controlling Release of Grades to Students using the Assignment activity

• Grading Assignments based on a Custom Rubric

  - Assignment grades can be given out by selecting specific levels on a series of criteria from a rubric designed by the instructor

• Grading Assignments based on a Custom marking guide

  - Similar to the rubric, assignment grades are given out by entering scores on pre-selected criteria with the added option of re-using commonly used comments

• Grading PDF Assignment Submissions

• Grading Forum Posts within the Assignment Activity

  - Enable students to pull all their posts/replies from a forum into the assignment as their submission

• Uploading Multiple Assignment Feedback Files at Once

• Splitting up Grading of Assignments in Large Sections

• Problems Grading Assignments

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

• 1 Adding content to a Content bank
• 2 Unlisting Content bank items
• 3 Available H5P Interactive Content Types

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

Getting started:

To do any quiz attempt reviews or grading, you must first click on the quiz link from your main eClass page.

To manually grade a student's essay response in a quiz:

1. If you want to review each student's full attempt one at a time, click 'Attempts: #'  and choose 'Review attempt' for each individual:
   
   
   
   
2. To see a detailed view of only the long answer responses that need grading for the entire quiz, click on the Results tab, then the Grades dropdown, then on Manual grading.
   
   
   
   
3. The next page will display all questions that require manual grading.
4. Clicking on the grade all link opens a grading interface that allows you to mark and comment on a question:
   
   
   
   
5. When manually grading an essay question, the grader is able to enter a custom comment in response to the essay and assign a score. Always be sure to click the Save button before navigating to another page.
   
   
   The options on this page will remain set for a given quiz, rather than resetting after leaving the grading window. 

To review short answer question responses:

1. To quickly review short answer question responses for an entire quiz, select Responses under the Grades dropdown:
   
   
   
   
2. Clicking Responses will open a quiz attempt table but with answers rather than scores received:
   
   

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

This article describes how instructors can use the built-in quiz statistics available for all selected-response-type questions (multiple-choice, true/false, matching, etc.) in the eClass quiz tool. These statistics are not available to review until after a quiz attempt has been completed by students. Once available, the stats can be used to review the performance of the class and to help determine the validity of the assessment and specific questions.

Test Scoring and Questionnaire Services (TSQS) can provide instructors with alternative item analysis reports and exam files using eClass quiz data. The reports may be of interest to instructors who have transitioned to eClass exams from Scantron multiple choice exams and would prefer to see the TSQS-style exam reports. Instructors can request reports by emailing test.scoring@ualberta.ca.

Accessing the Quiz Statistics

Navigate to your course home page, and click the link to your Quiz.

On the quiz details page, Click Results, then from the dropdown menu, select Statistics.

The statistics page sometimes loads slowly in quizzes with a large number of questions and student attempts. Once the page loads, the top section displays a range of information and statistics about the quiz as a whole: 

 

Basic Quiz Information and Statistics

The first few items are basic information about the quiz and how it was delivered:

- Quiz name - pulled directly from the quiz settings, the title you gave your quiz

- Course name - your course name

- Open the quiz - pulled directly from the quiz settings, the date you set the quiz to open

- Close the quiz - pulled directly from the quiz settings, the date you set the quiz to close

- Open for - pulled directly from the quiz settings, the duration of your exam window

- Number of complete graded first attempts - the number of students who completed a first attempt of your quiz 

Depending on the parameters set for the quiz regarding how many student attempts can be made (one attempt only, multiple attempts, highest grade, etc.), the following items will indicate the average grade across attempts:

- Total number of complete graded attempts - total number of student attempts on this quiz

- Average grade of first attempts

- Average grade for all attempts

- Average grade of last attempts

- Average grade of highest-graded attempts

 

Quiz Evaluation Statistics:

The next few items can help to determine the validity of your assessment overall.

- Median grade (for highest graded attempt) - If your quiz has skewness (by having a number of very high or very low scores), the median will assist you to judge your class’ performance in comparison to the mean (Average grade of attempts).

- Standard deviation (for highest graded attempt) - The standard deviation indicates how spread out the grades are in comparison to the average. Larger standard deviations indicate more spread and smaller standard deviations indicate less spread. 

- Score distribution skewness (for highest graded attempt) - Skewness helps determine how symmetric the distribution of grades is. Zero implies a perfectly symmetrical distribution, positive values have a ‘tail’ to the right and negative values have a ‘tail’ to the left. The ideal number will be a negative number around -1.0. If the value is too negative, this indicates the clustering of grades at the top of the distribution which makes it harder to discriminate the performance of high-scoring students. Similarly, a large positive value (greater than 1.0) indicates clustering to the bottom of the distribution making it hard to discriminate the performance of students with lower scores.

Image Source: Quiz report statistics - MoodleDocs. (2020). Retrieved 10 June 2020.

- Score distribution kurtosis (for highest graded attempt) - The ideal range will be between 0 to 1.

- Coefficient of internal consistency (for highest graded attempt) - This is Cronbach’s alpha. Ideal values should be above 65% but anything over 80% is very good. This value is typically represented in item analysis as a decimal value ranging from 0-1. High values signify that the quiz has a high level of reliability indicating scores can be used to consistently rank students. A low value can indicate that some of the questions are not measuring the same underlying knowledge and skills as the rest of the test. In this case, reporting total scores might mask the strengths and weaknesses students have for the different types of knowledge and skills being assessed. It can also mean that the test contains questions that are susceptible to random error and thus how students' scores on some questions are not related to the intended focus of the test  (e.g.: it is testing reading comprehension rather than content - i.e. the test questions are heterogeneous.)

- Error ratio (for highest graded attempt) - The Error ratio should have a lower score - if this score is high, it may indicate you have several difficult or very easy questions. Values over 50% indicate that there is substantial error, and imply that less than half the standard deviation is due to differences in ability and the rest is due to chance.

- Standard error (for highest graded attempt) - Standard error is derived from the quiz’s standard deviation and error ratio values. Ideally, this score should be below 8%. It is difficult to get this value below 5% or 6%.

 

Quiz Statistics for the individual items 

As you scroll downwards, you will see the individual questions listed, with each question title linking to more detailed information about that question. The columns in this table provide a statistical evaluation of each question. (To see Moodle’s guide to the item analysis headings, click the link 'Quiz structure analysis - for details click here'.) If you have pulled random questions from categories into your quiz, there is information for the question number slots and for the individual items. 

Additional details about the item analyses:

- Question name: The name of the question that was assigned when the quiz was built

- Attempts: The number of students who received this question on their exam. In the event that you have randomized questions pulling from a question bank category, not all students who wrote the test may have received that specific item.

- Facility Index: Also, item difficulty. This value indicates the percentage of students who answered this question correctly. You can use the following guide for an idea of the interpretation of different Facility Index scores. 

Image Source: Quiz report statistics - MoodleDocs. (2020). Retrieved 10 June 2020.

- Standard deviation: The amount of variation amongst student scores for this question.

- Random guess score: This is the mean score students would be expected to get for a random guess at the question. In an item with 4 answer options, students would always have a 25% chance of getting the item right.

- Intended weight: The weight assigned to the question on the Edit Quiz page.

- Effective weight: Is an attempt to estimate, from the results, how much of the actual variation amongst student responses was due to this question. Ideally the effective weights should be close or match to the intended weights.

- Discrimination Index: The correlation between the score for this question and the score for the entire quiz, effectively Item Discrimination. In Moodle, it is reported as a percentage, while it is commonly indicated in item analysis as a decimal value ranging from -1 to 1. Low values, below 20% and negative values indicate the item is discriminating in a way that is opposite to the rest of the test. In other words, lower-scoring students have a better chance of getting these questions correct than higher-scoring students and vice versa. The discrimination index correlates students’ overall performance on the quiz to their performance on each item; stronger students should have a better chance of getting each individual question correct, and weaker students should have a lower chance of getting each item correct. If everyone is getting it right (or wrong), then the question is too easy (or too hard). The higher the discrimination index, the better the question is at differentiating students who know the concepts being tested from those who don’t.

Image Source: Quiz report statistics - MoodleDocs. (2020). Retrieved 10 June 2020.

Discriminative efficiency: An item which is very easy or very difficult cannot discriminate between students of different ability levels, because most students will get the same score on that question. Discrimination efficiency will very rarely approach 100%, but values in excess of 50% should be achievable. Lower values indicate that the question is not nearly as effective at discriminating between students of different ability levels and is therefore not a particularly good question.

 

Problematic Items

Some question names will be highlighted in red, which is eClass' way of indicating that these questions should be reviewed by instructional staff. The red flags are triggered by a low discriminative efficiency score:

 

Individual Question Detailed Statistics

Clicking on an individual question name will bring you to a new page with more details about the question's performance. Additionally, you will be able to see the number of students who selected each answer option to review how your distractors are functioning.

 

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

Ratings for each individual student can be tallied (aggregated) in several ways:

• Average of ratings - The mean of all ratings.
• Count of ratings - The number of rated items becomes the final grade. Note that the total cannot exceed the maximum grade for the activity.
• Maximum rating - The highest rating becomes the final grade.
• Minimum rating - The lowest rating becomes the final grade.
• Sum of ratings - All ratings are added together. Note that the total cannot exceed the maximum grade for the activity.

The aggregation method will determine how students are scored (rated) on individual student posts, replies or entries. For example, you might select 'Maximum rating' if you wanted students to achieve a minimum standard and if they had a number of posts, replies or entries to try and achieve that standard. You could score (rate) them multiple times but they would only receive the highest score given.

Setting up Ratings:

1. In the 'Ratings' section of your activity's settings page, choose the required aggregation method in the 'Aggregate type' dropdown menu:

 

2. The 'Scale' section gives a number of choices on how students’ posts, replies or entries will be rated. Because ratings are assigned from a drop-down menu, numeric ratings are limited to discrete intervals. If students will be assessed a whole number rating, you should set 'Scale' Type to Point and specify the desired maximum score.

3. Otherwise, you should set 'Scale' Type to Scale. The following are some examples of commonly used scales:

• • Half Points and Quarter point scales can be used to give posts fractional numeric ratings.
  • Pass/Fail and Complete / Non-Complete can be used to give a student’s post a mark of either 0 or 1 but will be displayed as Pass, Fail, Complete, or Non-Complete.
  • More details on other scales can be found by clicking on the Grades tab at the top of your course main page. Then under the 'Grader report' drop-down, click on 'Scales'. It is also possible to Create and Use Custom Scales:

4. Choose a 'Scale' type:

5. The Like scale can be used to rate forum posts, glossary entries and database entries by the number of likes, similar to ‘liking’ something on social media. The Like scale is unique because the only assignable grade is Like and is, therefore, most often used with the Count of ratings Aggregate type. Numerically, a Like is worth 1 mark.

Who can rate activities:

Note that by default, only administrative roles in the course are allowed to rate forum posts, glossary entries and database entries. If you want to set your forum up so that students can 'Like' each other's posts, please follow the instructions in the article Allowing Students to Rate Forum Posts.

Time/date restrictions:

6. If you wish to add time restrictions to specify which ratings will be calculated, select the checkbox next to "Restrict ratings to items with dates in this range" and enter the desired range of dates.

7. Click Save and return to course, or Save and display, at the bottom of the page when you are done.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

The Grades tool in eClass offers options to format the display of your gradebook to students and to control which grades are visible to students.

Please note that some activities are graded automatically, e.g., Assignments and Quizzes. If an automatically-graded item is not set to be visible to students on the main course page, it will not be visible to students in the gradebook.

There are two alternatives for how you can control grade visibility:

1. On the main Grader report view with editing turned on; or
2. in the Gradebook setup view.

For verification of student grade visibility, the main Grader report view is recommended; for making changes to the course total aggregation and structural changes to the gradebook, the Gradebook setup view is recommended. This article contains screenshots demonstrating both methods.

Choose how to format the display of grades for students (Method 1 - Grader Report)

1. Click on 1), the Grades tab near the top of your course main page, then 2), turn on Edit mode at the top right of the page:

2. To change the display format of a grade column, click the gear icon at the top of the column.

• Note: if you do not see the 'eye' icons, click on the Gradebook setup drop-down, then on Preferences: Grader report and set the option Show show/hide icons to Yes.
• You can enter grade scores for students directly into the grader report with editing turned on by typing the value in the cell for a particular student's item and clicking Save changes at the bottom left. For automatically-graded items, manual grade entry will turn the cell orange and create a grade override.

3. In the 'Edit grade item' settings page, click Show more....

4. Set the 'Grade display type' option to one of the following:

• Real - the actual score.
• Percentage - the score converted to 100 total.
• Letter - the score converted to percent then assigned the letter score based on the course letter boundaries. (For instructions on setting the course letter boundaries, see the article Setting Letter Grade Boundaries.)
• Combinations of these 3 with one first and any other in brackets
• The default setting for Grade display type can be set for your entire gradebook in the Setup tab → Course grade settings tab.

 5. For different ways of aggregating and calculating your grades, see Calculating Your Course Total.

Choose how to format the display of grades for students (Method 2 - Gradebook setup)

1. Click on 1), the Grades tab near the top of your course main page, then 2), turn on Edit mode at the top right of the page.

2. Click on the Grader report dropdown, then on Gradebook setup:

3. To change the display format (not the actual value) of a grade item or activity, click Edit → Edit settings in the Actions column for the row of that grade item.

4. Repeat steps 3-4 from Method 1 (at this point the location is the same).

 

Choose which grades to display for students (Method 1 - Grader report)

1. Click on the gear icon on your course main page, then on Gradebook setup.

2. Click on the View tab, then on the Grader report tab. Click on Turn editing on near the top right. Note: Any column headers or grades that are written in grey writing are hidden from student view.

3. Any columns or cells that are visible to students will have an open 'eye' icon with no stroke through it. Columns and individual student items that are hidden from students have a crossed-out 'eye' icon. Clicking on the 'eye' icon acts as a toggle to show or hide grades and columns from students.

Note: Sometimes one or more students will not see their grades. Toggling the 'eye' icon will rest the whole column.

4. This method of checking student grade visibility can sometimes be more reliable than the second method. See the article Problems with Student Grade Visibility.

 

Choose which grades to display for students (Method 2 Gradebook setup)

1. Click on 1), the Grades tab near the top of your course main page, then 2), turn on Edit mode at the top right of the page.

2. Click on the Grader report dropdown, then on Gradebook setup:

Note: Any greyed-out column headers or grades are hidden from student view.

2. To change the visibility of an item, click Edit > Hide/Show in the actions column for that item

3. A known issue exists that can cause grade visibility problems when editing and using this view. Please see the article Problems with Student Grade Visibility.

Verifying the student's grade view by checking their user report

1. 1. Click on 1), the Grades tab near the top of your course main page, then 2), turn on Edit mode at the top right of the page.

2. Click on the Grader report drop-down, then on User report:

3. Select a particular student from the 'Select a user' drop-down to view their scores.

4. Note that greyed-out scores are not visible to the student.

5. You can select another student's report while in the User report view.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

• If you want your students to submit in groups, change 'Students submit in groups' to Yes.
  
  
• If you want students not in groups to make submissions, change the option for 'Require group to make submission' to No. This should generally not be changed as it prevents a known issue where student's submissions into the 'Default group' block all others from submitting.
  
  
• If you want to receive only a single submission from the entire group, leave the option for 'Require all group members submit' set to No (which is the default setting and not editable unless the setting 'Require students click submit button' is set to Yes).
  
  
• If you have a combined course or are using a number of different groups during the term in your course, you will need to specify a grouping to identify the specific set of groups to be applied for this assignment. For more information on creating groups and groupings, please see Setting Up Groupings. Note: if you do not correctly complete this step and have set 'Require all group members to submit' to No, the first student submission will get added to all the students and no one else will be able to submit.
  
  
• WARNING: Once submissions have been made, DO NOT alter the groups or groupings in any way. If groups or groupings need to be updated or changed, we recommend that you create new groups/groupings and re-deploy the assignment with the updated group settings. Failure to do so will result in lost student submission data and glitches with the assignment review.
  
  
• Once groups submissions are made, when you are grading you have the option of providing a single grade to all group members at once:
  
  

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

• 1 Recommended Practice
• 2 Letter Grade Ranges
• 3 Displaying Only Letter Grades to Students
• 4 Direct entry of letter grades
• 5 Providing Letter Scores for Individual Assessment Items

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

In addition, categories can be used to weight the grade items within the category differently from the course total calculation. This can be helpful in cases where you might want to drop the lowest grade or give bonus marks.

Note: Basic assessment items should be added as automatically-graded  'Grade items' not 'Grade categories.' Using grade categories instead of grade items can cause problems in calculating grades.

Set up gradebook categories:

1. Go to the 'Grader report' page by clicking on the Grades tab at the top of your course page.
   
   
   
   
2. Click on the Grader report dropdown menu and click on Gradebook setup.
   
   
   
   
3. Click on Add category at the top of the page.
   
   
   
   
4. On the next screen, you need to enter the following required information:
   • "Category Name" - Required name for your grade category. (E.g. "Lab Assignments")
   • "Aggregation" type - Select the aggregation method to determine how grades in this category will be combined (e.g., Mean of grades, Weighted mean, Simple weighted mean, Sum of grades).
     • For a description of the different aggregation methods see the article Calculating Your Course Total)
   • "Exclude empty grades" - if you do not wish to include ungraded assignments in the grade calculation (e.g., different groups of students submit different assignments)
   •  "Drop the lowest" - You may also decide that only the best grades are included. Set a number for the number of assignments to exclude from the grade calculation
   • "Grade type" - Choose from a value (numeric value), scale (item from the list that allows the options of quarter points, half points and discussion forum grading form) and text (feedback only).  
   • "Hidden" - Grades are hidden from students.
   • "Locked" - Prevents grades from being automatically updated by a related activity.
     
     
     
     
5. Select the Save changes button at the bottom.
   
   
6. Categories appear as folders in your list. Once you have created the necessary categories, you will need to move existing activities or create new activities in these categories.
   
   

Move Existing Activities to Categories:

There are a couple of ways to move existing activities into new categories:

Option A) Using the move icon for each individual activity

1. Click on the move icon next to the activity.
   
   
   
   
2. Dashed rectangular boxes will appear highlighting the slots in which the activity can be moved to.
   
   
   
   
3. Continue to move any necessary activities.

Option B) more conveniently uses a the drop-down menu to move multiple activities:

1. Select the checkboxes next to the activities you want to move.
   
   
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the Move selected items to on the dropdown menu.
   
   
3. Then, choose the category where you want to move the selected item(s):
   
   
   
   

Notes:

• If you later add new activities, you can select an existing grade category under the Grade setting of the activity.
  
  
  
  Complete the remaining activity details as necessary and select Save and return to course. Your new activity should appear in the selected category when you return to the 'Gradebook setup' page. Continue to add any necessary activities and return to 'Gradebook setup' in the Gradebook.
  
  
• Using the Add grade item at the bottom of the page will generate a column for grades in your gradebook, but no corresponding activity in your course. The Add grade item feature is commonly used for recording grades that are not taken via eClass, e.g. exams, presentations, or participation scores.
  
  
• To access the advanced options for aggregating categories (such as dropping the lowest mark), select Show more... under Grade category in the category's settings.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

1. Go to your Grader report by clicking on the Grades tab at the top of your course page:

2. Click on the Grader report dropdown and then on Gradebook setup.

3. Click on Add grade item:

4. Enter a name and a value for your grade item. Then, click on Save changes when you are done. 

 

5. A new column containing your grade item will appear in your gradebook.

6. To input grades manually, activate the Edit mode toggle in the top right of the course page:

7. Enter the students' grades in the text entry boxes in the column. The 'Tab' key can be used to move to the next student.

8. When you are finished, click on Save changes at the bottom of the page.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

This filtering can be especially useful in the gradebooks of large courses that contain multiple sub-sections (where groups are automatically created and updated based on all the sub-sections). This allows different instructors or TAs to sort the gradebook depending on the sub-sections they are responsible for grading.

To enable this filter:

1. Click on the Settings tab on top your course main page. Expand the Groups section then from the Group mode dropdown box, select Visible groups (leaving the other settings unchanged).
   Click on Save and display
   
   
   
   
2. In your gradebook, you will now see a dropdown box allowing you to sort by groups.
   
   

Example for Use:

A scenario where this could be very useful in large multi-section courses is to automatically sort the optically scored exams into sub-sections for review or offline grading.

1. First upload the spreadsheet provided by TSQS into your combined eClass course following these instructions: Importing Grades.
   
   
2. Once uploaded, you can view specific sections of grades by filtering the gradebook to a single one of the course sub-sections.
   
   
3. If you want to turn around and export just a subset of the gradebook to work offline, you can similarly filter the export page to include only a single sub-section.
   
   
   
   
4. This method could be used to divide a large TSQS spreadsheet into several smaller ones each representing a single sub-section.

 

Notes:

• Whichever option you choose for Group mode will automatically be selected for any new activities you add for the course so you may want to consider turning on groups at the course level AFTER you have completed course construction if the bulk of your activities or resources do not need to be split into groups. This is also the reason we recommend Visible groups as this has slightly less effect in case you create a new activity and forget to adjust the group settings for it specifically.
• Either Separate groups or Visible groups will add the filter option to your student lists. 
• The option to Force group mode should be set to No unless you are still constructing the course and know that you want activities to be split up into groups.
• By default, the filter dropdowns will contain ALL the groups in your course - if you have a number of groups that you want to strip out of the gradebook filter, you can create a grouping of those required and specifying it in the Default grouping dropdown. This would also be the required process to display only the groups in a specific grouping on the course participants page, for example to only display the 'public' groups in a course. For more information, see the article: Setting Up Groupings.
• Important note: both group mode options will allow students to see a filtered list of the groups in the course (all groups if the setting is Visible groups; only the groups they are enrolled in if Separate groups.) This means that if instructors are also using a group to apply overrides for accommodations since the users could see other student's private information. Instructors should can prevent students from viewing the participants page if they need to BOTH filter their gradebook by groups AND are using a accommodations group for overrides.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

Setting up a Marking Guide:

1. In your Assignment settings, select Marking guide for the 'Grading method' in the 'Grading' settings.
2. Customize the rest of the assignment settings as desired.
3. See the article Adding assignments for more detailed information.
4. Click Save and Display.
   
   
   
   
5. The first time you save an assignment with Marking guide as the grading method, a page will open so that you can 'Define a new grading form from scratch' or 'Create new grading form from a template':
   
   
   
   
6. If you wish to define the grading form later or make changes to it, you can access it by clicking on going to your assignment's Advanced grading tab.
   
   
   
   
7. To configure your new marking guide you must first enter a name. The name is important if you want to re-use this marking guide in other assignments.
8. You can then begin customizing each criterion by specifying the content, description for students and/or markers and the maximum mark.
9. To enter text, click directly on the specific items in each criterion.

• Note: you can enter multiple lines of text along with the grade for the criteria in the Descriptions simply by pressing Enter at the end of each line, for example:
  • 0 - Submission is not coherent
  • 2 - Response produces an adequate argumentative structure
  • 5 - The argument is well-structured and persuasive

10. You may also wish to add snippets of text to be used as Frequently used comments for quickly adding common feedback items to student assignments.

11. Click the checkboxes to enable Show guide definition to students and Show marks per criterion to students if you wish to display the marking guide breakdown to students with all the descriptions and marks awarded for each criterion.

12. Finally, click Save marking guide and make it ready.

Grading using a Marking Guide:

1. Once students have submitted their assignments, access the assignment grading table as usual by entering the assignment and clicking View all submissions.
   
   
   
   
2. Click on the corresponding Grade button next to the student's submission.
   
   
   
   
3. The marking guide will automatically be displayed on the grading page. Use the marking guide to grade student assignments and add feedback.
   
   
   
   
   
   4. Selecting the Insert frequently used comment button for a criterion will display a pop-up from which you can select the comment to append.
   
   
   
   

5. Remember to save changes.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

Forum ratings can be customized with a specific aggregation method and custom scale (see this article for instructions - Grading Forums, Glossaries and Databases Using Ratings).
By default, instructors and TAs with gradebook privileges will be able to rate, edit, and view the aggregated forum totals for each post.

It is possible to give students additional privileges to rate forum posts as a collaborative activity with control over whether or not they can see each posts total aggregated score and/or who has provided what ratings - Allowing Students to Rate Forum Posts (Peer review).
So while whole forum grading is best for instructors who want to look at a course participant's posts and give it a direct grade, or to mark using grading methods like marking guides or rubrics, forum ratings are best for if you want to mark it based on a certain aggregation method, such as the average of all ratings of a student's posts in a forum over the course duration, or if you want to students to rate each other's posts.

Rating Forum Posts

1. After setting up the Forum Ratings, at the bottom of each post (and reply) in a forum, instructors and TAs will see a Rate dropdown menu with their chosen aggregation method and scale. Select the desired value from the dropdown to rate the forum post.
   
   
   
   
2. Once you specify a rating, the page should refresh to reflect the addition of your rating to the aggregation. This will be visible immediately to the left of the rating dropdown in the form of 2 numbers: the first number displays the aggregated rating and the second number enclosed in the brackets indicates how many people have rated the post (ie. the number of ratings used in the aggregation). For example, 3(1) means that the forum post scored a 3 based on one rating. Note that students do not see the aggregated score or count for ratings.
   
   
   
   
3. Once a forum has been rated, clicking the two numbers will show the instructor a summary of which other instructors or TAs have provided ratings and their score. This summary view can be useful in collaborative situations when students have been given rating capabilities.
   
   

 

Navigating within forums to facilitate grading in forums:

1. If you ever need to return quickly to the main forum page listing all topics, click Forum.
2. You can navigate to the previous or next post in a forum by clicking the topic title and arrows at the top and bottom of the current post and replies.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

To toggle between displays, click the plus-sign, minus-sign or box icon beside the course or category names. Clicking each icon will change the format to Full view, Aggregates only, or Grades only as shown below.

• 1 Setting up Whole Forum Grading
• 2 Grading Forums
• 3 Notes

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

Once student submissions have been made, the online grading workflows are accessed through the Grade option below the assignment submissions summary; the bulk download options are available under View all submissions:

Downloading A Single Student's Files

Within the online grader, there are links to download the files from a specific submission. This can be useful if there is a problem with a specific file preventing it from being converted for online markup:

Bulk Downloads

For bulk downloads on the student submissions table (under View all submission), select Download all submissions:

Before downloading multiple Assignment submissions, decide whether you want to download the submissions as files or folders and select that option below the table under 'Options':

This setting will become your user default setting for assignment downloads. For either option you select, each file or folder will be renamed to uniquely identify each student.

• If you uncheck the option to “Download submissions in folders,” each submission will be a file renamed to match the identity of each student.

• If you leave the option to “Download submissions in folders” checked, each submission will be zipped in a folder named to match the identity of each student. To identify the zipped items as folders, an underscore is suffixed to each folder name.

This action will produce a .zip file, which when uncompressed or extracted will create a folder containing all the student submissions. The assignment files are named via the following convention: group name if selected, student name, random assignment ID-name, original file name.) The folder is named with the course name, the assignment name, and a unique ID.

This naming convention cannot be changed if you intend to upload these files back into each students file feedback area in the eClass assignment. If you are planning to do this, it is recommended to have your students submit their assignments in a common format that you can annotate such as an MS Word document or a PDF. Then, when you extract the .zip file containing all the submissions, you can edit these documents directly in the same folder. 

When you have decompressed or extracted the zipped assignments, you may start grading and annotating them but please note:

• Do not rename any of the files;
• If you downloaded the files in folders, annotate the files within the folder;
• Do not move the files from the folders, and do not rename the folders.

Selecting Multiple Files for Download

• It is also possible to download only selected student's submissions: place a check to the left of their name and choose Download selected student submissions from the dropdown below the table and click Go:
  
  

Uploading Multiple Assignment Feedback Files

When you have finished marking up assignment, you can upload to the Assignment submissions page.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

Access restrictions in activity settings

Students will not be able to see their grades when an access restriction has been applied and when you have also clicked the 'eye' icon to hide the item entirely from student view:

On the main eClass course page, these items are shown to instructors as hidden from students with a notification of the restriction condition. 

Even with the restrictions, this Assignment activity and its grades will not be hidden from instructors and will seem as if it should be visible to students in the 'Grader report' view:

Note that the Group assignment in this example is hidden from view. We will discuss this setting below.

The Assignment grades will also appear as if they should be as visible to students as they are in the instructor's view of a 'User report' for a particular student:

If you Switch role to... 'Student' from the drop-down menu at the top right of your course, or by using the DemoStudent view, you will see that the Assignment is hidden from students as shown here:

When the grade is hidden with an access restriction, you can make the hidden item visible in the student's grade view simply by clicking on the 'eye' icon in the access restriction to remove the stroke through it.

Access restrictions in 'Grader report' settings

As above, the example of the Group assignment shows an entire column of grades has been hidden. These grades can be revealed simply by clicking on the 'eye' icon at the head of the column.

It will sometimes happen that only one or a few students will not be able to see their grades. You may be able to reveal all grades simply by toggling the 'eye' icon to hide, then reveal grades again.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

• Click on the Assignment on your course page
• Click on View all submissions
• Click on the Grade button
• At the bottom right of the page, adjust the view so that you can see the student's submission.
  
  
  
  
• These buttons will display different views of a PDF of the student's submission and a series of annotation tools along the top to provide text, graphical, and icon feedback directly onto the PDF. These tools do not have any customization options. Instructors can use the 2 icons to rotate student submissions that are uploaded in the wrong orientation.
  
  
  
  
• Once finished annotating and grading a student's submission, Save changes at the bottom of the page.
• Once saved, students can view your annotated PDF through their assignment submission page and can download or view it online.
  
  

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

• 1 Create random groups
• 2 Create your assignments or quizzes
• 3 Set up access restrictions

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

To enable anonymous submissions:

1. Turn on Edit mode at the top right corner of your class page
2. Click on the 3-dot dropdown to the right of the assignment and select 'Edit settings'
3. In your Assignment settings, scroll down to the 'Grade' option and select Yes for the 'Anonymous submissions' option. 
4. Save your changes and return to the main course page.
   
   

To grade assignments using anonymous submissions:

1. Click on the assignment and select View all submissions.
   
   
   
   
2. The "Identifier" column in the Gradebook now displays random numbers in place of student names:
   
   

To release grade to students using anonymous submissions:

1. From the assignment's 'Grading summary' page, click on View all submissions.
   
   
   
   
2. At the top left of the page, from the 'Grading action' drop-down menu, select Reveal student identities.
   
   
   
   
3. To confirm that you want to reveal student identities and release student grades to the gradebook, click on Continue.
   
   
   
   
4. The "Identifier" column in the Gradebook now displays student names in place of random numbers:

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

• 1 Assigning Markers to grade assignments
• 2 Viewing assigned graders
• 3 Hiding the identity of graders from students

To split up grading of assignments:

1. Turn on 'Marker allocation' under the 'Grade' section in your assignment settings. Note: You cannot turn on 'Marker allocation' until the 'Marking workflow' is turned on.
   
   
   
   
2. This adds a column to the assignment grading table ('View/grade all assignments') called Marker. The marker for a one or more particular assignment(s) can be specified directly from this dropdown:
   
   
   
   
3. You are also able to bulk assign markers. First select the students by checking the box at the left of their row, then from the 'With selected...' area at the bottom of the page, choose Set allocated marker and then Go:
   
   

Then confirm the assignment of the marker for the selected students by clicking Save changes:

Viewing Assigned Graders

Once grading is underway, it is possible to filter the assignment grading table to view the progress of individual graders or review their grades.

You can similarly further filter the table for assignments given a particular status of the grading workflow.

Hiding grader identity from students:

If you are working a large class and want all students to contact a specific instructor or a central email with questions surrounding grading, it is possible to hide the grader identity from students: 

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

To access the grade item editing screen:

1. Go to the Grades from the top menu bar on your course page.
   
   
   
   
2. Select the menu item located below and then Gradebook setup.
   
   
   
   
3. Click Edit then Edit settings in the row of the grade item you need to edit.
   
   
   
   
4. Or, if you are already inside the gradebook in the Grader report menu, toggle on Edit mode at the top right and then click on the gear icon in the top row of the column you need to edit.
   
   
   
   
5. Once you are on the grade item editing screen, if no student grades have been entered, the screen will be easily editable just as if you were adding a new grade item (see Adding Grade Items for more information).
   
   If student grades have already been entered, the screen will appear differently, alerting you to that fact. At this time you are also prevented from changing the 'Grade type' and from editing the 'Maximum grade' until the 'Rescale existing grades' dropdown is specified.
   
   
   
   
6. To determine whether to rescale or not, all that is required is to know whether the existing student grades have been scored as if the maximum grade was already correct, ie. if you were entering scores as if the total was 50 but the grade item had the default maximum grade of 100 specified. Selecting No will result in no changes to the student scores - so that they will remain the correct raw score for the new maximum grade (this is the most common use case and should be the selection in most cases).
   
   Selecting Yes will convert the scores to so that their original percentage is retained, rescaling them to be out of the new maximum grade - this would only be required if you had initially scored an item out of 100 and wanted to convert the item and all scores to be out of a different total.
   
   
   
   

Note that grade settings changes for built-in eClass activities (such as quizzes or assignment) must be changed in the activity itself rather than through the gradebook.

Duplicating a manual grade item:

Manual grade items can be duplicated via their 'Edit' menu in the gradebook setup . Grades aren't copied, only settings, including weight (if applicable).

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

To access the User report:

1. Select Grades from the top menu bar
   
   
   
   
2. Select the menu option shown below and then User report.
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Select a user from the drop down menu to see the Student's view of the gradebook.
   
   
   
   

To modify the User report:

Select the menu item as seen below and then Course grade settings .
You can modify the last category of settings which corresponds to the User report. Do not forget to click Save changes once you are done.

Note: Students can only view their own grades in the gradebook and will never be able to see other students’ grades.

The default settings for the User report reflect the most commonly used settings for university level courses. Depending on your department or faculty’s regulations, revealing some of these fields to students may be inappropriate in a university level setting. For example, displaying a student’s rank and the average grade in a small class could help students to infer information about classmates’ grades.

There are some settings which can help to communicate to students how their course total grade is calculated and provide other useful information:

• Show percentage - Column for the percentage grade received.
• Show grades - Column for the raw score received.
• Show feedback - Column for feedback comments associated with a grade.
  Show weightings - Column for the relative weight of each grade item. Note that this setting will exclude the weights of empty grade items if your aggregation is setup to exclude empty grade items.
• Show Average - Column for the class average on a grade item.
• Show ranges - Column for displaying the minimum and maximum attainable raw scores.

Additional (less commonly utilized) customization options are as follows:

• Show rank - Column for rank relative to the rest of the class.
• Show letter grades - Column for the letter grade equivalent of a student’s score according to the course’s Letter Grade Boundaries.
• Show contribution to course total - Column of percentages corresponding to the percentage a student’s score on any given grade item contributes to their final mark. The sum of these values is the student’s current course total percentage.
• Range decimal points - How many decimal points should be displayed in the Range column.
• Show hidden items - Sets the behavior and visibility of hidden grade items.
• Hide totals if they contain hidden items - This setting is used to prevent student confusion when grade items in a category are hidden. By default, any category containing hidden items will also hide the category total. If this setting is changed, it can be configured to show either the grade total including the hidden items or the grade total excluding the hidden items.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

To change these settings: 

1. On your course main page, click on the Settings tab.
   
   
   
   
2. You will be taken to the Edit course settings page. In the General category from the dropdown menu for Course Visible, select Hide to hide the course from the students' view.
   
   
   
   
3. Once you are done click on Save changes at the bottom of the page.
   
   

The course will now be unavailable to students. To re-enable student access after your exam, simply follow the same steps and adjust the value to Show.

If you have a multi-section course and want the course content to be hidden only for certain sections at a time, contact eclass@ualberta.ca and we can show you another (more complicated) method of doing this.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

Initial setup

First, you will need to set up groups of students in your course. Each group is representative of the group of students that one marker is responsible for grading.

If these groups will be different for each assignment, you will need to create a unique set of groups for each assignment. Setting up a Grouping for each assignment can be helpful when grading assignment submissions. Be sure to use unique and descriptive group names: e.g., Assignment 1 Group 1, Assignment 1 Group 2, Assignment 1 Group 3, Assignment 2 Group 1, Assignment 2 Group 2, etc.

Course setup

Setting a course-level group mode is required to see the per-grader averages for assignments. To set a course-level group mode, click on the Settings tab on your course main page, then scroll down to the Groups area of the settings and change Group mode to Visible groups.

 

Assignment setup (optional)

Note: If students are to submit in groups, the assignment should be configured for group submission.

There are two ways to configure an assignment which can help markers keep track of which students they are responsible for grading.

The easiest way is to enable a group mode for the assignment. To set an assignment’s group mode, click on the Settings tab on your assignment page, then under Common module settings, change Group mode to Visible groups then Save at the bottom of the page. This area is also where you can specify a grouping if you will have varying marker allocations throughout the course.

It is also possible to explicitly allocate specific markers to a specific set of students using marker allocation but this is not a prerequisite for viewing per-grader averages. For more details on marker allocation, please see Splitting up Grading of Assignments in Large Sections.

 

Splitting assignment grading by group

After completing the steps outlined above, each grader will have the ability to filter assignment submissions by Group. To do so, click on View All Submissions in the assignment that is being graded.

Then select a group from the Visible Groups drop-down at the top of the page. This can help graders keep track of which students they are assigned to grade.

For an overview of using the assignment grading table, please see Grading Student Assignments.

Viewing per-grader averages

Per-grader averages can be viewed from within the gradebook which is accessed by clicking on Grades tab at the top of the page.

Similarly to assignments, the gradebook can be filtered by group. To do so, select a group from the Visible groups drop-down.

After selecting a group, both the Overall average and Group average are displayed at the bottom of the Grader report. In large courses, these averages can be used to determine the relative difficulty of each grader. Accordingly, manual adjustments can be made to balance out students’ grades.

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

• 1 Enable Calculations 
• 2 Set up Calculations
• 3 Constructing Calculations
• 4 Example Calculations
• 5 Additional Notes

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

This article will explain how to re-use an existing rubric that you have already created in one eClass assignment for grading a different assignment.

First, we will need to create a template from an already existing rubric. If you do not have a rubric, please see the following article in order to make one: Using Rubrics.

To use an existing rubric for another assignment:

1. First, click on the assignment. 
   
   
   
   
2. On the assignment's Grading summary page, click on the Advanced grading tab on the top panel.
   
   
   
   
3. You will be taken to a new page. On the top of the page. there will be a drop-down menu box. Select Rubric as the option from the list. Then, click on Create new grading form from a template.
   
   
   
   
4. On the new page, there will be a search function that will allow you to find any of your own existing rubrics. Type in the name of the rubric here. Please ensure you click on the check box "include my own forms".
   
   
   
   
5. A list of all the rubrics you created should appear. When you find the rubric, click on Use this form as a template.
   
   
   
   
6. Then, click on Continue and you are done.  
   
   
   
   You can now use your previously created rubric for your current assignment.