Do you need an assignment to be worth more than 100 points?
**This page is under construction so the details may not be accurate. Please contact the elearning department if you have trouble.
By default, several Moodle activies (Assignments, Forums and Glossaries) only go up to 100 total points. Thankfully, there is a way to work around that limitation for the purposes of calculating your final grade.
The easiest way to circumvent the limitation on these activities is through the use of grade categories.
1. Set your Assignment to be graded out of 100 initially. This will act as a percentage score, rather than a raw total (96 becomes 96%)
2. Click on the "Grades" link in your "settings" block.
3. At the top of the screen, notice the small drop down menu (shown below). The default should say "grader report." Select "simple view" (under the "categories and items" heading).
4. Click on "add category" at the bottom of the page.
5. Give the category a name (ex: "Senior Project Presentation w/Poster").
6. In the "category total" area, set the "maximum grade" to the point total you originally wanted for the activity (e.g. 150 points)
7. Click "save changes."
8. Click the green up-and-down arrows to the right of the activity you want to adjust, and then click on the empty dotted box inside the new Category you created. (Basically move the assignment into the category you just created).
10. Click "Save changes" below the list of grade items to lock in the change.
Your students will now see two entries: one for the activity, and then an adjusted "Total" column for the raw score. By default, only the Total is factored into the final grade for the course, the other becomes a placeholder for the percentage score.
The second option is to create a scale.
Sometimes the default maximum amount of points is not enough for an assignment that you want to create. When this is the case, a grading scale may be created so that it can be accessed at any time for all future assignments of the course it was created for.
The easiest way to circumvent the limitation on these activities is through the use of grade categories.
1. Set your Assignment to be graded out of 100 initially. This will act as a percentage score, rather than a raw total (96 becomes 96%)
2. Click on the "Grades" link in your "settings" block.
3. At the top of the screen, notice the small drop down menu (shown below). The default should say "grader report." Select "simple view" (under the "categories and items" heading).
4. Click on "add category" at the bottom of the page.
5. Give the category a name (ex: "Senior Project Presentation w/Poster").
6. In the "category total" area, set the "maximum grade" to the point total you originally wanted for the activity (e.g. 150 points)
7. Click "save changes."
8. Click the green up-and-down arrows to the right of the activity you want to adjust, and then click on the empty dotted box inside the new Category you created. (Basically move the assignment into the category you just created).
10. Click "Save changes" below the list of grade items to lock in the change.
Your students will now see two entries: one for the activity, and then an adjusted "Total" column for the raw score. By default, only the Total is factored into the final grade for the course, the other becomes a placeholder for the percentage score.
The second option is to create a scale.
Sometimes the default maximum amount of points is not enough for an assignment that you want to create. When this is the case, a grading scale may be created so that it can be accessed at any time for all future assignments of the course it was created for.
- From the course home page and in the "settings" block, select the tab labeled “grades.”
- From the drop down menu, select “view” under the "scales" (shown below).
- Click on “add a new scale."
- Now fill in the “Name” and “Scale” fields. In the “Name” field, a descriptive name may be used so that the scale is easily understandable the next time an assignment is being created. In the “Scale” field, all possible numeric or non-numeric grades attainable by the students need to be filled in separated by commas. When creating a points scale, you must work from the highest to the lowest number (150, 149,148,147...) and continue all the way to 1.
- Save the changes.
Select "simple view" in the drop down menu for the first set of instructions.
