A Category is used to organise Grade Items into groups in the Grades tool. It can convert the sum total of all the Grade Items in the Category in accordance with specified weightings. The outcome of this calculation is seen as a Subtotal. Categories can also be set up to drop a specified number of items with the lowest or highest grades, or to drop ungraded items. To learn more about Grades and Categories have a look at the documents: Grades Primer and in particular the document Grades and Categories.

To create a Category:

Step 1 – Click on ‘Grades’ and go to the ‘Manage Grades’ tab.

Step 2 – Click the ‘New’ button at the top of the page and Choose ‘Category’ from the options.

Step 3 – Give the category a name that states clearly what it is. You can also optionally set a ‘short name’ (how the grade will appear in your ‘enter grades’) and a description.

Step 4– Choose the ‘Weight’ for the category (ie, what will the total of the grades inside it will be worth overall).

Step 5 – Choose a ‘distribution’ option. For more information about what they do see the document ‘Grades and Categories‘ which explains in some further detail. If you choose to distribute the weights of grades evenly (option 3) you can also optionally choose to drop 1 or more highest or lowest grade item. Grade items that are ‘dropped’ are shown in the ‘Enter Grades’ page with a (!) icon.

Step 6 – If you want specific view settings for students you can choose them here, you may need to set the option for ‘Override the default settings’ if you wish to use different settings to the default.

You can even choose to un-select all of the options. If none are chosen- the Category will still show in the student’s gradebook as an ‘organisational’ item, so this can be a handy way to organise a ‘complex’ gradebook even if you choose not to use the subtotals.

Step 8 – Click ‘Save and Close’.

This then adds the category to the bottom of the list of your grades. You can now either create new grades and assign them to the category or you can edit existing grades to add them to the category.

This table provides an overview of common MyLO tools, and their relationship to Grade Items. It also takes into account electronic Rubrics, Turnitin and Grademark.

We do not recommend creating different Grade Items or Categories for different cohorts, unless the submission methods used for each cohort are substantially different (see scenarios on next page).

Markers can easily change the marking environment to view a specific group of students. This means there is no need to create separate Dropbox Folders or Grade Items to differentiate between cohorts (in most cases). You can choose to view and mark only External or Internal students. If you have set up tutorial/workshop groups using the MyLO Groups tool, you can choose to mark students in a particular tutorial/workshop group. You can do this in any environment that features the View By tool. These instructions will show you how.

Some examples of scenarios that require the creation of different Grade Items to represent different cohorts

• All students must deliver a presentation. Face-to-face students do this in class. They also respond to questions about their presentation in class. The marker records F2F students’ grades for both activities in a single standalone Grade Item in MyLO.  Distance students must submit a presentation to a Dropbox folder. Thereafter, their presentations are shared in a Discussion Topic. They must reply to students’ queries about their presentation. The marks for their replies are recorded in a Grade Item connected to the Discussion.
• Students must contribute to small group discussion tasks over a period of time. Each group requires its own Discussion Topic; therefore, a different Grade Item has to be created to connect to each group’s Topic

Even in these scenarios, there may some creative ways to avoid the creation of multiple Grade Items. For example, in Scenario 1 all students could be required to submit their slides/notes to a Dropbox prior to their presentation, and all marks could be recorded in the same Grade Item.

We suggest discussing different scenarios with a member of the Flexible Education Team. It is best to do this whilst designing your assessment tasks, as small changes made at this point can make a big difference to the organisation and complexity of your Grades tool down the track.

You can easily change how you see grades in the Grades tool. For example, you may wish to see only the Grade Scheme, or you can choose to see Points, Weighted and Grade Schemes presented. These instructions will show you how.

Note that these changes will apply only to YOUR view of the Grades tool. Tutors and other colleagues who wish to see the same view, will have to follow the procedure themselves. You will need to follow these instructions to change the way that students see their Grades.

Before you start building your Grades tool, you should make a decision about the grading system that you’re going to use. This decision will impact on the options you will have available to you when setting up Categories and Grade Items. You can download a printable version of this explanation (complete with pictures) if you would prefer to read off screen.

Once you have made a decision, follow these instructions to check your current grade system and change it if necessary.

Points system

The points system is simple, but it does have limitations. It does not suit scenarios where multiple Grade Items contribute to the same assessment task. Furthermore, the Final Grade Calculation, which shows a student’s progress on marked assessments to date, will show only a percentage or UTAS Grade when this system is used. A points system suits scenarios in which you have only one Grade Item per assessment task for all students. The image below shows a Grades tool using a points system.

Weighted system

Using a weighted system provides you with more flexibility. Firstly it allows you to mark a Grade Item out of 100 points. MyLO can then calculate the overall grade according to the weight allocated to the Item. Weightings can also be used to determine the contribution that a particular Grade Item makes to a Category. For example, let’s say you have Part 1 and Part 2 of Assessment 3. Each part is marked separately, but you need an overall score for the assessment. Assessment 3 is worth 35% (35/100) of the unit. You can set up Part 1 to be worth 20% of the assessment task, and Part 2 to be worth 80%. The Category Subtotal will calculate the overall grade for Assessment 3.

These instructions will show you how to set up the default for how students will see their Grades inside your unit. If you’re not sure whether to select a Grading Scheme (or what that scheme might look like), you will find this post helpful.

You can easily change how students see their Grades, especially if you do this before you start setting up your Grade Items.

You can choose to allow students to see one or all of the views seen in the image below: these instructions will show you how. We wouldn’t recommend showing all of these, as it can be quite confusing! To demonstrate, however, we have chosen to show all the views in the image below. The image shows what a student would see.

• Points grade (shown as Points to students)This shows students their raw score out of the total possible points associated with the task. In the image below, Assessment 3 is an example of two items that are marked out of 100 points, but weighted to their true value. Generally, this view is not displayed to students.
• Weighted grade (shown as Weight Achieved to students)This shows the student what they have received out of the total value of the assessment task. In the image below, Assessment 3 is worth 35% of the unit. Two tasks (Grade Items) combine to provide the student with 28 out of 35 possible marks. This view only works when a ‘weighted’ grading system is in use. Note that it is the only view that will show an overall score for a Category to the student.
• Grade scheme symbol (shown as Grade to students) What the students see will depend on what you choose as the Grade Scheme for each Grade Item. You can choose the Percentage grade scheme (so students see their score represented as a percentage) OR the UTAS Grades scheme, which shows students their grade (e.g. NN, PP, CR, DN or HD). To save time, you may wish to change the default Grade Scheme for your unit (see instructions on p. 6). In the image below, the UTAS Grades scheme was used for all Grade Items, except Assessment 4, which uses the Percentage grading scheme.

MyLO has a series of Grade Schemes. These control how a score is interpreted to students. The two main Grade Schemes in use at UTAS are:

• UTAS Grades: students see their score represented as a NN, PP, CR, DN or HD.
• Percentage: students see their score represented as a percentage.

By default, MyLO uses the Percentage Grade Scheme. If you would prefer to use the UTAS Grade Scheme for most Grade Items, save yourself some time by setting it as the default for your Grades tool. Do this before you create your Grade Items for maximum efficiency. These instructions explain how to set your default Grade Scheme.

This table outlines common grading scenarios. Each scenario is linked to a solution that can be implemented in the Grades tool, to help you collect, mark and distribute grades in the most efficient manner possible. Full instructions are provided for each solution (click on the name of a solution to link to the instructions). If you do not see a scenario that applies to you, please contact the TSBE Flexible Education Team for further advice.

Choose a scenario from the left column, then refer to the solution shown in the right column.

Depending on the way you have set up your Grades tool, and the structure of your assessment tasks, you may need to grade un-submitted student work with a value of 0. If you don’t record ANY value against a Grade Item, MyLO will ‘drop’ that Grade Item from a Category or from the Final Calculated Grade for a student. This can be problematic if you do not want these Grade Items dropped from the student’s overall grade for the unit.

These instructions explain how you can quickly record 0 as the score for students who have failed to submit assessment tasks, using the Grades tool.