Grade book

The column header provides more information about the assessment in a tooltip when the mouse pointer is hovered over it. Clicking a participant name shows the student’s view of the grade book. Final assessments are highlighted in green and shown right after the name of the participant. To assess a learner, click on the Assess link, or the column header of the assessment.

A bar with different options is located above the column headers, allowing you to add new assessments, sort and filter, as well as exporting the grade book contents to csv or Excel spread sheets.

In courses with a large number of students you can search for specific students in the Find participant search field.

An assessment scale is the scale used to grade the different content in the grade book, for example, ‘A to F’, ‘1 to 6’ or ‘Passed/Not passed’. One or more assessment scales are probably defined by your administrator in Admin >> Edit global settings >> Assessment settings, but you are free to create your own by clicking Create (for example, a scale consisting of High/medium/low or even smileys). Scales added by an administrator cannot be changed by teachers.

Score

Score was introduced as an assessment scale in February 2013 and allows teachers to give a score based on a given maximum score. When adding an assignment the teacher is allowed to enter a maximum score (must be a number value between 0 and 99999), for example, ‘100’. The teacher can then mark the different assignments with points from 0 to 100. In tests a score is added to each question and summarized automatically by the system.

Score is a good alternative for courses that don’t use grades, such as primary schools. The score gives a good overview of the student’s accomplishments for parents and teachers, as well as the students themselves.

Score cannot be created as a scale by the teacher and must be enabled by and administrator in the Assessment settings by ticking the box Include Score as an assessment alternative.

Score is also possible to use as a custom assessment. If you use score on, for example, an oral exam, you must enter the maximum number of points in the Max score box and manually mark the exam in the grade book.

Viewing score in the grade book

The score can appear in the grade book in two ways: raw score or per cent. A toggle with a green indicator lets you switch between the two by clicking it. The raw score (123 in the toggle) is default, and shows the actual score achieved on, for example, a test or assignment. Per cent (% in the toggle) shows the result as a percentage of the element’s max score.

Within a course, you may have different types of assessments, such as for home assignments, group assignments, and regular assignments and tests. Such elements can be grouped together to form a category. Categories are used for filtering the grade book items to create a better overview in the grade book overview.

It is also possible to weight assessments differently within individual categories, which is useful when averages are turned on for the course. When weighting is turned on for categories, a Weight column appears in the Add category overview allowing the teacher to add points for each category. Percentage will be calculated automatically based on the values added in the weight column.

Categories must be created manually, from the Categories tab in the grade book (see how-tos). Elements that are not connected to any of the categories created will appear in a “category” called “Uncategorized”.

The grade book settings tab opens by default when you click Grade book settings in the top right corner of the grade book. The settings have three categories: Weighting, Average and Export to CSV file.

Weighting

It is possible to weight elements (tests and assignments) and/or categories. When weighting is enabled, you are allowed to enter a weight (a number) for categories, assignments, tests or custom assessments.

Weighting for categories is turned on by clicking the Categories tab and then ticking 'Yes' for the 'Use weighting for categories' option, while to enable weighting for elements, you click the Grade book settings tab and then tick 'Yes' for the 'Use weighting for assessments' option.

Weighting for categories:

Note that when you turn on weighting, non-categorized elements are assigned a weight of 0 by default.

Weighting for elements:

Average

Average is the average of a given number of grades. If a learner is given the marks 1, 2 and 3, the average is 2. Count is used for scales that cannot return an average when summing up all assessments – for example, 'Very good: 3 times, ‘Good: 8 times and so on.

Under Average you decide whether to show course averages in the grade book. Upon enabling Show participant’s averages per term, a new tab called Average and count will appear in the grade book. Clicking this tab will show you averages for all categories and assessment scales (if more than one scale is used). When more than one scale is used for a category, the average per scale is listed in separate columns sorted under the correct category.

When using score as assessment the average will be shown as per cent by default. The teacher can select to view the average as a different assessment scales as well, but the student can only see the average as per cent.

Enabling the option Show course average on each assignment, test etc. shows the average of an assessment in a tooltip when hovering on the assessment title. It can be made visible for teachers only or for everyone that has access to the grade book. If Show participant’s averages per term is disabled, the Average and count tab will not appear.

The average feature is disabled by default.

Export to CSV file

You are allowed to export the grade book to a comma-delimited file (.csv file) from Action >> Export to CSV file. The comma separated file with the grades can be used to import the grades into a different administrative system. This option allows you to select what to include in the file: Assessment only, Assessment converted to percentage or Both assessment and percentage.

Another option is to view the grade book in a normal Excel spread sheet.

What happens next is that a head teacher or mentor receives a notification and is responsible for completing the term on the organisation level. Responsibility for the assessments is now transferred to the next level – most often that of the head teacher but sometimes a mentor. This depends on the settings for the site.

It is still possible for a teacher to change the assessments after the above-mentioned button is clicked, but when the head teacher (or mentor) has approved and completed all of the term's assessments at the organisational level, they are locked for teachers. If an assessment needs to be changed post-completion by a headteacher or mentor, they have to make all changes. So, make sure that all assessments are finished before completing the terms.

When a teacher completes a term, the visibility of the assessments may change (for example, they may be visible to the learners). This depends on the workflow settings, which may differ from one site to the next.

These sites see a Transfer to [name of the MIS] link.

For you to use external MIS export, the course and its participants need to be imported from the MIS. The user making the transfer must be a registered user of the MIS.

Depending on the size of the grade book, the data transfer may take a while, because the job transfer is queued. If you see that the transfer is 'In progress', please be patient and wait until the transfer is complete.

You can add an element that is already in the grade book or add a calculating column that can determine marks across terms and categories. This enables you to build your own grading summary or report based on assessments in the grade book.

When creating a calculation for the summary, you will be able to choose from among the categories you have created in the course and also from the terms used in the course.

Summary views

You can have multiple, different summaries (views), to which you can add several calculations. Each summary has its own tab. The active tab is blue, while the inactive ones are grey. To add a summary, click Add summary.

A summary can contain calculations or existing assessments (for example, for tests and assignments or custom assessments from the grade book).

Adding calculations

Calculations are added by clicking on the Assessment summary tab in the grade book and then Add calculation. Start by giving the calculation a title and a description. The title will appear as a column header on the assessment summary tab and the description appears in a tooltip when the mouse pointer is hovered over the title.

Choosing what to calculate

Under the heading What will you calculate?, you have two options:

• Base the calculation on categories and terms
• Base the calculation on another calculation (this requires you to have at least one existing calculation)

Tick the boxes in front of the categories, terms, or existing calculations you want to use in the calculation. You can change the category weighting or add term weighting for the selected categories and terms by ticking the box Change category weighting or Add term weighting.

Presenting the calculation

Under How will you present the calculation?, indicate whether percentages may exceed 100 in the overviews or decimal values should be used. You can also choose to highlight and show the mark for each student at the top of the assessment-record summaries.

Click Save to add the calculation.

Adding existing assessments

To add an existing assessment to a summary, click Add existing assessment. Tick the box in front of the assessment you want to include, and click Save.

1. Go to the course to which you want to enable the grade book.
2. Click Settings.
3. Click Course properties and features.
4. Under Functions, tick the box Use grade book.

1. Enter a course.
2. Click Status and follow-up in the navigation tree.
3. Click Grade book.
4. Click Add assessment.
5. Tick the box Custom assessment (any work you want to assess).
6. Enter a Title for the assessment (the title will appear in the grade book)
7. Depending on the grade book settings you can select whether to use the assessment as a final assessment or connect the assessment to a category.
8. Depending on the settings you may choose an assessment scale from the Assessment scale drop-down.
9. Click Save.

When you create tests and assignments you have the option to add the activity to the grade book, but it can also done after the test or assignment is created:

1. Enter a course.
2. Click Status and follow-up in the navigation tree.
3. Click Grade book.
4. Click Add assessment.
5. Tick the box Existing activities in itslearning.
6. Select an element to add to the grade book from the Elements list.
7. Depending on the grade book settings you can select whether to use the assessment as a final assessment or connect the assessment to a category.
8. Click Save.

1. Enter a course.
2. Click Status and follow-up in the navigation tree.
3. Click Grade book.
4. Click Grade book settings.
5. Click the Categories tab.
6. Click Add category.
7. Enter a name in the Title field.
8. Click Save.

1. Enter a course.
2. Click Status and follow-up in the navigation tree.
3. Click Grade book.
4. Click Grade book settings.
5. Under Average, select the type of average you want to enable.
6. Click Save.

itslearning allows you to export the grade into a colon-separated file (*.csv) which can be imported into, for example, Microsoft Excel or other applications.

1. Enter a course.
2. Click Status and follow-up in the navigation tree.
3. Click Grade book.
4. Click Action.
5. Select whether to open the grade book as a csv file or as an Excel file (*.xlsx).

The exported file will show all students, and will not take into account any sorting or filters.

1. Open the Assessments tab in the grade book.
2. Click on the assessment from which you want to create the exemption.
3. Select the Exempt option.

.