Skip to main content

Moodle Grading

By
I still dislike the "pop-up" or "list" method for entering grades in Moodle. I could enter digits much faster; I hate being forced to use the mouse / touchpad to select grades. This is consuming a bit more time than it should, but it seems comparable to Blackboard in terms of the time and effort. At least I have Moodle set to always show the complete enrollment when I enter grades. For some reason, Blackboard always showed only ten students at a time, no matter how often I told the system I wanted to see 25 or more students at once.

The grade book for Moodle is a bit confusing, still. I use a Numbers spreadsheet I migrated from MS Excel, so the online grades are only for students to track their progress. Still, I wish the display were a little easier to read. The last column is showing an average points earned per assignment, when what I would like to see is a points total. I'm sure I'll figure out how to change this… but it isn't a major issue right now.

Students are starting to create profiles and update their information. They are also using the Moodle wiki module a bit more. The threaded discussions have exhibited the standard drop off in participation, so I'll have to comment on some posts and get students re-engaged.

I'm going to try returning some "Advanced Assignments," which in Moodle means I can return a comment file. Hope it works, since I had mistakenly assumed I could return single file assignments.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MarsEdit and Blogging

By
MarsEdit (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Mailing posts to blogs, a practice I adopted in 2005, allows a blogger like me to store copies of draft posts within email. If Blogger , WordPress, or the blogging platform of the moment crashes or for some other reason eats my posts, at least I have the original drafts of most entries. I find having such a nicely organized archive convenient — much easier than remembering to archive posts from Blogger or WordPress to my computer. With this post, I am testing MarsEdit from Red Sweater Software based on recent reviews, including an overview on 9to5Mac . Composing posts an email offers a fast way to prepare draft blogs, but the email does not always work well if you want to include basic formatting, images, and links to online resources. Submitting to Blogger via Apple Mail often produced complex HTML with unnecessary font and paragraph formatting styles. Problems with rich text led me to convert blog entries to plaintext in Apple Mail
2 comments
Read more

Learning to Program

By
Late last night I installed the update to Apple's OS X programming tool suite, Xcode 4. This summer, in my "free" time I intend to work my way through my old copy of Teach Yourself C and the several Objective-C books I own. While I do play with various languages and tools, from AppleScript to PHP, I've never managed to master Objective-C — which is something I want to do. As I've written several times, knowing simple coding techniques is a practical skill and one that helps learn problem solving strategies. Even my use of AppleScript and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) on a regular basis helps remind me to tackle problems in distinct steps, with clear objectives from step to step. There are many free programming tools that students should be encouraged to try. On OS X, the first two tools I suggest to non-technical students are Automator and AppleScript. These tools allow you to automate tasks on OS X, similar to the batch files of DOS or the macros of Wor
2 comments
Read more

Learning to Code: Comments Count

By
I like comments in computer programming source code. I've never been the programmer to claim, "My code doesn't need comments." Maybe it is because I've always worked on so many projects that I need comments  to remind me what I was thinking when I entered the source code into the text editor. Most programmers end up in a similar situation. They look at a function and wonder, "Why did I do it this way?" Tangent : I also like comments in my "human" writing projects. One of the sad consequences of moving to digital media is that we might lose all the little marginalia authors and editors leave on manuscript drafts. That thought, the desire to preserve my notes, is worthy of its own blog post — so watch for a post on writing software and notes. Here are my rules for comments: Source code files should begin with identifying comments and an update log. Functions, subroutines, and blocks of code should have at least one descriptive comment.
3 comments
Read more