Moodle: Creating custom scales for grading

Moodle allows instructors to create custom grading scales to use for assignments. Understanding how to create and use custom scales is helpful for keeping an accurate Gradebook.

Understanding Values of Scale Items

You can use words, numbers, or symbols to indicate items in your scale. Moodle will assign each scale item a value out of 100 points, using regular fractions for calculation. 

Let's say you want to grade assignments using a [No Credit, ✔️➖, ✔️,✔️➕] scale. This scale contains four items, with 'No Credit' being the lowest and ✔️➕ being the highest. Moodle will assign values to the scale items as follows:

Because Moodle assigns grades to scale items using fractions, simple scales like this one may not be ideal for evaluating all assignments. To adjust the percentages Moodle assigns to your scale items, you must adjust the scale itself.

Changing Values Assigned to Scale Items

If you would like to assign particular grades to your scale items, you may have to add placeholder items to your scale. For example, consider the scale from the previous section. If you would like to assign ✔️➖to 85%, ✔️to 90%, and ✔️➕to 95%, you must expand your scale.

Though the majority of the new scale items are placeholders, the resulting scale can often be more useful for grading than the simple scale we started with.

Creating a new Moodle Scale

Now that you know how scale items are assigned values, you can create a new scale for grading:

1. From the Moodle navigation bar, click Grades
2. Click Grader Report to open the drop down menu
3. From the list, select Scales
4. Next to the drop down menu, click Add a new scale 
5. Enter a name for your scale
6. Enter your scale items in ascending order (beginning with the lowest grade), separated by commas
   1. The following text will create the expanded scale outlined in the table above:
      1. No Credit,➖,➖,➖,➖,➖,➖,➖,➖,➖,➖,➖,➖,➖,➖,➖,✔️➖,✔️,✔️➕,➖
7. If you would like, you can give your scale a description
8. Once your settings are finalized, click Save changes

Using Your Scale

Now that your scale is ready, you can use it to grade existing assignments, and set it to the grading method of choice for new assignments. To use your new scale to grade an assignment:

1. Navigate to the assignment
2. Under Settings, open the Grade section
3. Click on the dropdown menu labeled Type
4. Select Scale from the grading options
5. A Scale menu will appear. From here, choose which scale you would like to grade with

Questions?

Submit a Moodle Support ticket.

Acknowledgments

Created by Carly Born, Mon 12/12/22, last modified by Fiona Ibrahim ‘24, Thu 10/23/24.