Returning Grades and Feedback through Moodle

Many units across the Faculty are using some of the native Moodle tools such as quizzes and assignment drop-boxes to enable assessment and provide a channel for feedback and grades. But how can we return grades and feedback electronically for those assessments that were not facilitated through Moodle?

Before we delve in to this topic further, it is worth highlighting the University position, in that grades must be entered into Agresso at the earliest convenience. Further to this, additional work (expected implementation in Jan) is attempting to pull out those grades from Agresso and feed them directly into the Assessments block in Moodle units.

Having said that, there are obvious benefits of providing detailed feedback to students through Moodle's Grades tool, and there are a range of methods that allow us to do this. Here I will pick up on two of the most straightforward approaches;

1) Offline Activity
The 'Offline Activity' is available from the 'Add an Activity' menu, and is really straightforward. It easily creates an extra Grades column to enable you to provide a grade and some basic feedback.

2) Advanced Uploading of Files 
Whilst you may or may not use this to manage online submission, this tool still enables staff to leave a grade and upload a detailed feedback file to students.

With both methods, a link to the assessment appears on the Moodle unit page. Students can click on the link to view their feedback and grades, as well as being able to check through the Grades link.

How to....

Both processes are reasonably straightforward to set up and use, but the following screencast runs through the steps anyway.





As always, please do leave a comment if you have any questions or to share how you are using electronic methods to aid the assessment and feedback processes.



This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

The Student Resource Area

Most staff will probably be aware that we have access to a Staff Resource Area within Moodle, but did you know there is an equivalent Student Resource Area where all students are automatically enrolled?

The Student Resource Area is split into a five sections. The following descriptions are taken directly;

Skills Online

Skills Online is a resource that will support you in developing the necessary skills you need to study and progress successfully at this level. It is designed to be used to complement your programme-based teaching and learning activities.



Employability Online

Employability Online is a resource which gives you the opportunity to develop key skills that employers are looking for. It will help you to reflect on your areas of relative strength and on development.




InfoSkills

The InfoSkills Online tutorial helps develop Information Literacy skills. Self-sufficiency and effectiveness in locating, evaluating and employing good quality research information is an important life and career skill. Information Literacy has been identified as a key Graduate Competency in MMU's "Employability Curriculum Framework".


Moodle Guides & Support

Guides include how to access and navigate Moodle, editing Profiles, submitting Assignments and using Discussion Forums.






Equal Opportunities & Diversity

This programme must be completed by all students as well as staff. The module does not carry credits for your University course but completion of the programme will contribute to your continuing personal development in this key transferable skill area.








So if your students are in need of a little further online self-directed support, you  know where to send them....


This work by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.