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Grade book - weighted assignments sum to 100% per type (Theory/Lab)

Bart.O.6611

Migrated from Moodle, where the Quizzes are worth 30% of the final course mark (2 at 15% each), and Assignments are worth 70% (20 of them, varying percentages 2-6 each).

In Moodle I just entered the weighting of each individual assignment towards the full course mark (2%, 5%, etc.) totaling to 70% for the assignments part of the course mark.

However, it looks like Brightspace wants me to instead enter in the percentage for each assignment *out of 70*, which is a huge pain for 20 items of varying percentages.

Am I explaining this correctly, and understanding Brightspace correctly?

I have the assignments entered in as in Moodle but a 'note' appears to indicate a problem: "'LAB' sums to 70%, not 100%. Verify the total weight of all items in the category is 100%."

Perhaps the migration introduced a glitch here... I have two items in the grade book that were more like categories: "Theory" and "LAB". Theory is set to a weighting of 30, LAB to 70. Then within Theory I have two quizzes, each weighted at 15. Perhaps these two labels or whatever (LAB and Theory) are throwing things off...?

I don't want to have to calculate and enter 2/70, 5/70, 3/70, etc. if I can at all help it... would be nice if the software could do the work for me (like Moodle, which has other flaws). Thanks.

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Accepted answers

Jennifer.W.973

@Bart.O.6611 If you just have the 2 quizzes and 20 assignments, I wouldn't even bother with categories in the gradebook. Just set the 2 quizzes each to 15% weight and then you can keep the assignments at their original weights that add up to 70% - that way every item in the entire gradebook will add up to 100% and it will be easier for students to understand how their final grade is calculated. Each item's weight will simply be how much it contributes to the final grade.

Using categories in a weighted gradebook adds a little more complexity which may not even be necessary since there always must be a weight attached to the category. If there were an option to use categories just to organize the items without any overall category weight, that would make things clearer, but that is not possible in D2L with weighted gradebooks.

Alternatively, you could make it even simpler and just use a points-based gradebook by setting the points on each item the same as the weights since it all adds to 100 anyway.

All comments

Bart.O.6611

Interesting (perhaps) side note - the grade book shows the two categories of Theory and LAB, and their weightings of 30 and 70, respectively, but if I edit an Assignment it doesn't show which category it's in, and if I click on 'Edit Categories' it doesn't show ANY. The list is empty. I take it either there are default categories or these two (Theory/LAB) were migrated from Moodle.

This may or may not be relevant to the main question posted above.

Jennifer.W.973

@Bart.O.6611 I think this is mostly due to the way D2L displays weights. Items within a category must add up to 100%, so your Quizzes category should be set to 30% weight and then the 2 items in that category should be 50% each. D2L does not display the weight towards the final grade for items within a category (50% item weight within category x 30% category weight = 15% weight towards final grade for each individual item, which is not displayed)

All categories and any items not within a category must also add up to 100% to calculate the final grade. You may also see a note about that at the top.

D2L does not allow nested categories, so your Theory and Lab category weights must be adjusted to ensure that everything adds up to 100%. Were those supposed to be sub-categories within an Assignment category?

Also, categories in assignments are just for organizing assignments in that tool and have no impact on the gradebook categories.

Bart.O.6611

Glad to see your response, Jennifer!

Turns out I didn't explain clearly in my initial post. As you can tell, I'm pretty new to the whole system here.

I have about 20 'lab' assignments, where the weightings were based on being out of 100, so the students would know the impact on their overall course mark on each of those assignments. The weightings range from 2 (out of 100) to 6 (out of 100).

I fear that D2L's system means I have to convert each of those 'out of 100' weightings to 'out of 70' since the lab part of the class takes up 70 of the overall 100 course marks. (The 2 quizzes at 15% each make up the other 30)

Or can I take the assignments out of the 'lab' category entirely, so their weightings are looked as out of 100 like in the old Moodle gradebook? Longer term I can consider changing the weightings to be out of 70 instead (which would involve meetings with a number of people), but wonder if there's a short-term solution to match what we had in Moodle's gradebook.

Thanks - hope this helps clarify the situation!

Jennifer.W.973

Alternatively, you could make it even simpler and just use a points-based gradebook by setting the points on each item the same as the weights since it all adds to 100 anyway.

Bart.O.6611

Got it - I will see if I can get rid of the categories. They were created (automatically? by someone else manually?) in our Moodle migration.

Done - no more warnings!

Thanks for the help.