Weighted grading involves separating graded assignments into categories, then weighting each category according to its importance. The way an instructor grades students should be described in the course syllabus. Before starting to setup a weighted grade system in Moodle, consult your syllabus to make sure the gradebook’s weights reflect the syllabus’ weights exactly.
To setup a weighted graded system in Moodle, go to the Simple View in the gradebook (inside the gradebook navigational menu in the upper left corner of the gradebook). Set the first dropdown menu in the Simple View to “Weighted mean of grade”. This settings provides a weight column for each category.
Set the first dropdown menu to “Weighted mean of grade”
Next, create categories for each weighted category in your syllabus. You can create these categories by click on the “Add category” button at the bottom of the Simple View page.
For each weighted category, set it to “Simple weighted mean of grades” and assign a weight number in the weight column. If the category Quizzes was set to 50%, it would look like the image below. Note that there is no need to add a % sign when typing the number. The total weight of all categories should add up to 100.
Set each category to “Simple weighted mean of grades”
After all category weights have been typed in, make sure that all category totals and the course total are 100. This should never change when using a weighted grading method
The Course total should never be changed from 100
Finally, any items that are outside of a category should be moved into the appropriate category. Move all quizzes into the Quizzes category and forums into the Forums category until all graded items are inside of a weight category. To move the items, check the checkbox on the far right for each item, then scroll to the bottom on the Simple View and select the dropdown menu. Choose the category you wish to move the items.
Select a category from the dropdown list at the bottom of the Simple View
Once all items are moved into categories, your finished gradebook should appear like the image below. If there are any items that do not count towards a student’s final grade, and are outside of a category, make sure that the weight box for that item is set to zero.
Sample Finished Gradebook (click to enlarge)