It is possible to export MyLO Grades to an Excel Spreadsheet as a backup or for future reference.

These instructions explain how to export all your entire Grades record for a unit, or even just a single Grade Item, to an Excel spreadsheet.

UTAS requires that academics do not release students’ final assessment task marks on MyLO until after the exam period and release of formal grades by the University. You can still mark students’ final assessment piece online and publish the marks to the Grades tool, but you will need to ensure that students cannot see the marks or feedback associated with their final assessment. This is achieved by:

• hiding the Assignment Submission Folder/Quiz Submission View and associated Grade Item from students; and
• ensuring that students cannot see Grades or Assignment Submission Folders in the My/User Progress tool.

These items must be hidden from students before you publish and grades or feedback. The instructions from page 3 of this [PDF] will show you how.

If you have scheduled an examination as the final assessment piece for your unit, you may wish to release students’ internal grade; that is, the grade that they have achieved to date. You can do this using the Final Calculated Grade tool, a feature of the Grades tool.

These step-by-step instructions will show you how to release the Final Calculated Grade to students.

What does it do?

The Grades tool is used to track student participation and grades over time. You can also use the Grades tool to provide students with a summary of their overall Grade grades. This snapshot of the Standard View of the Grades tool points out some of the key features of the tool.

Useful terminology

Grade Item
A column of the Grades tool dedicated to tracking the grades associated with a particular task. It may be associated with a MyLO assessment tool like a Dropbox or Quiz, or it could be a standalone item used to track classroom participation or presentations.

Standalone Grade Item
A Grade Item that is not linked to any type of MyLO activity. Generally used to track attendance and participation, or the scores associated with an in-class performance (like a presentation).

Category
Used to organise Grade Items into clusters. 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.

Settings
Used to control elements of the Grades tool, such as whether a points or weightings system is used, the way students see their Grades (by default) and the way you see Grades.

Release Conditions
Control student access to Grade objects, based on date, or on Group membership (including whether students are enrolled in Internal or External study modes).

Helpful resources and instructions

• How to set up your Grades tool
  This comprehensive guide contains all you need to know to set up your Grades tool to suit the structure of your unit assessment, and your preferred method of viewing Grades.
• How to hide or un-hide Grade Items for students
• How to create a Standalone Grade Item
  This is a useful method of tracking Grades for items that will not be completed in, or submitted to, MyLO, for example, participation or in class presentations.
• How to associate a Grade Item with a Dropbox, Discussion or Quiz
• How to release internal grades to students
  This post explains how you can use the Final Calculated Grade tool to release an internal grade to students, prior to them sitting a final examination.
• Publish final assessment marks to the Grades tool without releasing the marks and feedback to students
• Export Grades to an Excel Spreadsheet
• Quickly grade unsubmitted work as 0
  The Grades tool will ‘drop’ Grade Items from a Category subtotal or the Final Calculated Grade if no numerical score is recorded. If you don’t want a student’s grade for an item to be dropped, you will need to record a score. 0 should be recorded to represent non-submission/no-show.

Before your MyLO unit reaches its end date, you can export a set of Grademark comments (known as Quickmarks) for use in future units. You can also export a set to share with members of your teaching team, so that they can use the same set to mark student assignments. You can only export Bubble comments, e.g. those comments that appear to students when they click on a speech bubble. Text comments, where text is typed directly onto a student’s work, cannot be exported.

NOTE: Once a unit ends in MyLO (e.g. it becomes a ‘past’ unit), you will no longer be able to export a Grademark set, nor will you be able to view it.

At present, there are two different views of Grademark in use. We have provided instructions for the most recent view, Feedback Studio, below.  If you prefer to use the old Grademark Classic view, you will find instructions on this page.

Please note that these instructions were written for use with Google Chrome, the browser recommended for use with MyLO. If you are using a different browser, the options presented to you may appear slightly different to the examples shown below.

Export a Grademark Set in Feedback Studio View

Access Feedback Studio as you normally would to evaluate a student’s work (any student submission in the relevant unit will do). When Feedback Studio loads, select the Quickmarks icon from the menu seen to the right of the screen. It looks like a blue box with a white check inside of it.

The Quickmarks menu will open on the right side of the screen.

The currently selected Set name will appear in the drop down menu. Click on the name (or the small, white arrow head). Select the Quickmark Manager option.

The Quickmark Manager window will open. Click on the menu icon (3 parallel lines, top left corner) and ensure that the set you wish to export is selected. The selected set will have a check next to it. To select a different set, click on it once.

Now, select the Download Set option from the menu.

The Set will now be downloaded to your computer (usually to the Downloads folder associated with your browser). In Google Chrome, you will see the download appear towards the bottom left corner of your screen (most recent download will usually be on the far left). To open the folder containing the download, click on the menu arrowhead and select the Open in Folder option.

This will open the Downloads folder, and the Grademark Set export file (it will have a qms file extension) will be highlighted. Save the Set somewhere that you will remember by copying it from your Downloads folder, and pasting it into your preferred storage folder.

Import a Grademark Set into a different unit

Access Feedback Studio via a student’s submission in the new unit. When Feedback Studio loads, select the Quickmarks icon from the menu seen to the right of the screen. It looks like a blue box with a white check inside of it.

The Quickmarks menu will open on the right side of the screen.

The currently selected Set name will appear in the drop down menu. Click on the name (or the small, white arrow head). Select the Quickmark Manager option.

The Quickmarks Manager window will open. Select the menu (three parallel lines, top left corner), then select the Upload Set option.

Follow the prompts to upload your set file.

MyLO is not capable of auto-marking complex free text responses (e.g. of more than one or two words) for short (SA) and long answer  (LA) quiz questions.

If students are likely to write full sentence answers, you will need to check student responses to SA and LA questions, and mark their answers accordingly.

You can do this using the Grade option attached to a Quiz.  This document takes you through the process of marking Quiz responses, one step at a time.

You can use a MyLO Rubric to provide feedback to students, even if you don’t intend to generate a mark with the Rubric. This type of Rubric is known as an Analytic Text Only. NOTE: You will still need to choose an overall score (level) when marking.

Follow the instructions below to create a Rubric for feedback only. If you would like to use a Rubric for feedback and marking (e.g. to generate an overall score or Grade), check out this post instead.

Step 1

Select Assessment > Rubrics from the MyLO toolbar.

Step 2

Select the New Rubric button.

Step 3

Configure the Properties for your Rubric as shown in the image below.

• Give your Rubric a Name, and keep the Rubric Status as Under Development. 
• You can give your Rubric a short Description if you wish to (this is optional).
• The Rubric Type must be set as Analytic. 
• Record the Initial # of criteria. This will generally be five: one each for HD, DN, CR, PP and NN. As this Rubric is for feedback only, you may wish to use novel levels, such as Pass/Fail (two levels).
• Record the Initial # of criteria. This reflects how many rows will be seen in the Rubric (other than the Levels header and a final row for the Overall grade). You can add or remove criteria rows later if you need to.

Once you have set the Properties, scroll down and select the Save button.

Step 4

Select the Levels and Criteria tab.

Step 5

By default, the level names are Level 5, Level 4 etc. You will need to change the Level names to names you would like to use. At this point, you can also add your Criterion Descriptions. Select the arrowhead next to Criteria (left cell, top row), then select Edit Criteria Group.  

Replace the existing Level names with your own names, then add in the Criterion. For efficiency, you can tab between the fields. You can also paste text (e.g. from a Word document) into each cell using keyboard shortcuts or browser menu options. Scroll down and select the Save button when you have finished (you may need to scroll down to see it).

Step 6

You will now need to edit the Level names in the Overall Score row (bottom row of the Rubric) to match those of the top row. To do this, select the arrowhead next to Overall Score (left cell, bottom row), then select Edit Levels.

Edit the Overall Level Names. There is no need to add a Description or Feedback. When you have finished, scroll down and select the Save button at the bottom of the page.

Step 7

You can now enter the Level descriptions for each criterion. You can either edit all the criterion descriptions for the same Level (e.g. those in the same column) by selecting the arrowhead next to a Level and choosing Edit Level…

… or edit all the descriptions associated with one criterion (e.g. those in the same row), by selecting the arrowhead next to that criteria, then selecting Edit Criterion.

Whichever method you choose, type OR copy and paste in your descriptions into the Description field. You can add Feedback if you wish. A student will only see this feedback if you select this criterion level when marking their work.

Step 8

Continue entering the descriptions until your Rubric is complete. Remember to save your work by selecting the Save button (bottom left of the screen). Once your Rubric is finished, you will need to Finalise it and attach it to the relevant Assignment Submission Folder or Grade Item.

If your students have been recording reflections using the ePortfolio tool – whether via Forms or via self-initiated Reflections – you may want to assess their work at some point.

Students can submit individual ePortfolio items to you via a Dropbox. However, if you would like students to submit several ePortfolio items for assessment, it may be preferable for them to create an ePortfolio Presentation. A Presentation is a web page (or collection of pages) containing items that the students have added to their ePortfolio over time. The Presentation can then be submitted to a MyLO Dropbox for assessment.

If you would like to get your students to create ePortfolio Presentations for assessment, these printable instructions [PDF] will help guide them through the process.

You can use Grademark to apply comments to electronic assignment submissions. Students can then view the comments once their assessment results have been published.

Why use Grademark?

Grademark allows you to insert comments onto a student’s assignment. You can use an existing bank of comments, known as a Grademark Set, or create new comments as you go. This is somewhat like writing comments in the margins of a student’s assignment. It is potentially much quicker than the analogue method, as you can re-use comments across student submissions.

What can be marked with Grademark?

You can use Grademark to add comments to files that have been submitted to a Group or Individual Dropbox in MyLO. The Dropbox must have Turnitin enabled. A range of different file types can be used with Grademark, including Word documents, images, PDFs and PowerPoint files. View this post to learn how to enable Turnitin/Grademark when setting up a Dropbox. For further information about file types that can be used with Turnitin and Grademark, view this post. Note that some file types will not work with Turnitin or Grademark.

Essential vocabulary

• Quickmarks are drop and drag comments that you can ‘drag’ onto a students work.
• Quickmarks can be categorised into sets. Sets can then be used across different assessment submissions in a unit, or exported for use in other units.
• Text comments are unique to a student’s submission. They cannot be used in other assignments.
• Bubble Comments can be used to highlight text and make comments about. They can also be saved as Quickmarks.

How to mark with Grademark

These short videos will show you how to mark student submissions with Grademark. Alternatively, you may wish to download these printable instructions. One important thing to remember – Grademark saves (most) of your work automatically, so simply close the window and you’re done!

View a student’s submission in Grademark

Add, edit or remove a Text comment (unique to this student’s work)

Add a Bubble Comment

Change between Quickmark Sets and drag Quickmarks onto a student’s submission

Create a new Quickmark Set and add new Quickmarks to it

Edit and delete Grademarks

See an overview of the Comments (including Grademarks) that you have made so far (on screen or in print)

When they visit the Grades tool, your students will only see Grade Items that have been made visible to them.

In this video, Peta explains how to make a Grade Item visible or invisible to students by altering its settings. She also explains how to restrict visibility to particular groups of students.

If you use Grade Categories, please make note:

Categories can be used to organise Grade Items. Like Grade Items, Categories can be hidden from student view. You make them visible/invisible the same way that you would do for a Grade Item. However, if you hide a Category from students, this will automatically hide all the Grade Items in that category, even if they are set up to be visible.