March 13, 2018     FAQs . Grades & Gradebook . How To - Faculty    

How do I add an extra credit item to the gradebook?

As an instructor, you can indicate a pre-existing item is to be ‘extra credit’ or you can add a new extra credit item.

This FAQ will walk you through creation process from scratch.

Two Things of Note:

  1. Extra credit items are only possible in a points-based aggregation. The aggregation for the whole course or the category to which you are adding extra credit must be either ‘Natural’ or ‘Simple Weighted Mean of Grades.’
  2. You CANNOT have a category that contains only extra credit. Moodle will ignore the category and not count the extra credit at all. If you have an item that will be graded but has not yet been graded, this still means there are not graded items in the category.

Note: you can click on any image to view a larger version of the image.

  1. Login to Moodle and click on the course, to which you wish to add the extra credit item.
  2. From the main page of your course, look in the upper right corner, next to the course name and under your name, for a small gray gear wheel icon. Click on this icon.
  3. From the drop-down administration menu that appears, click on the ‘Gradebook setup’ option.
  4. On the ‘Gradebook setup’ page (formerly known as the ‘Categories & items’ page), scroll down to the bottom.
  5. You should see two buttons; one is labelled ‘Add category,’ the other labelled ‘Add grade item.’ Click the button labelled ‘Add grade item.’
  6. On the ‘Grade item’ screen, complete the ‘Item name.’ Insert the maximum grade.
  7. Place the grade item in the appropriate category, if you have categories in your gradebook. If it is not in a category, simply leave the category at the default value.
  8. Scroll down, and click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
  9. You may be brought to an interstitial page, as the gradebook recalculates, depending on your gradebook set-up. If you are, click the ‘Continue’ button once the gradebook is done recalculating.
  10. You will be brought back to the ‘Gradebook set-up’ page. The grade item will be populated at the bottom of the category into which it was placed, or at the bottom of the gradebook, if it was not placed into a category.
  11. Now, click on the ‘Edit’ in the ‘Actions’ menu for the column for the newly created item.
  12. Select the ‘Edit settings’ option which appears.
  13. This will bring you back to a similar but not precisely the same settings page for the newly created extra credit item.
  14. Scroll down to the ‘Parent category’ section. Check the box next to ‘Extra credit’ to tell the system that this item is extra credit. Save your changes.
  15. Your grades will recalculate. Click ‘Continue.’
  16. Now, when you return back to the “Gradebook setup” page, you will now see a little plus sign next to the “Max grade” for the extra credit activity.

Your extra credit item is now created! To enter grades for this item, please check out the steps in the following FAQ: “How do I enter grades and feedback for a manual grade item?”

Remember:

  1. Extra credit items are only possible in a points-based aggregation. The aggregation for the whole course or the category to which you are adding extra credit must be either ‘Natural’ or ‘Simple Weighted Mean of Grades.’
  2. You CANNOT have a category that contains only extra credit. Moodle will ignore the category and not count the extra credit at all.