Extra Credit Grade Categories

If you have a grade category that consists only of Bonus (extra credit) items, make sure to check the box so that the category "Can Exceed." If you do not, the points for any items within that category will not be included in the Final Calculated Grade item.

Thanks Linda Sneed for discovering this.

Share content confidentially with students

In addition to assessment data, the Grades tool can be used to share other information confidentially with students. Here are the steps to do so:

1. Create a grade item for this purpose.
   Note: Make it a Text item if there is not a score associated with the content you want to share.
2. Back on the Grades List / Manage Grades page, click on the Enter grades icon for the item you created.
3. For a student, click on the Enter comments icon. This opens a pop-up window with two fields. Click on the box "Comments for users:" to add comments for this particular student. You can use the Quicklink button to add links to external videos or course files.
   Note: If you want to share a particular file with a particular student, that file must first be uploaded to the Manage Files area of course.

Students can access this content by going to the Grades page within your course offering.

The video demonstration shows an example using individual videos on EduStream: [VIDEO DEMO]

Thanks to John Gilgun for asking the question.

Collecting student lab data

Thanks to Mark Lee for asking this question: "Is there a way to post an Excel spreadsheet in the dropbox so that students can post their results? Now each student is posting a separate spreadsheet, and I have to transfer the data manually to a combined sheet."

My answer:
Do you want students to be able to enter data and see the results as they do, or do you want to collect data and then display their results to them?

Converting an Excel spreadsheet into an interactive web page will give you the first option, but it is usable only in Internet Explorer and does not include charts. The data is not saved, though a student can download the Excel file to a local computer.

For the other option, one way is to use a quiz that collects the data only. You can create a report in CSV format with their answers (grouped by student) and then format that data as you wish for student display.

A second way for this is to use a Google Docs form and spreadsheet. You can design a form that asks for the specific data and then take their results and publish the spreadsheet the form appends to. You can also publish charts separately from the spreadsheet, and the data updates automatically. Each student could fill out the form multiple times. One way to discourage this is to place the form inside a quiz.

View a course offering as a student via the Instructor-student role

You can view a course offering as if you were a student without logging out by switching your role within the course offering to Instructor-student. This role has the same privileges as the Student role with one exception: Users enrolled as instructor-student can switch themselves back to the Instructor role.

While enrolled as Instructor-student, you can take quizzes, view content, submit files to dropbox folders, etc., as if you were a student. All of your activity is recorded as if you were a student. You will not be able to see any course material that is hidden from students, including items that are restricted by date and by release condition.

This is a change that must be done via the Classlist, not the Role Switch widget. [VIDEO DEMO]

Rating Discussion Messages

One of the options for discussion is to allow users to rate the messages that are there. This can be turned on by clicking the Settings link from the Discussion Area and then clicking in the box so that messages can be rated.

Note that this is an org unit setting, which means that it applies to all discussion messages within that course offering.

Once turned on, each user can apply a 1 to 5 stars to each message. The average rating of each message appears on the list of messages, and the number of ratings for a particular message is displayed when the message contents are visible. It is not possible to see what rating a particular user has applied to a particular message. Users can change their ratings of messages at any time.