Grades 3 - Adding a grade item (or column in the gradebook)

Moodle Help & Support

This refers to Moodle 4.1 from December 2023 onward

How to use Moodle Grades (Gradebook) #3 Adding a grade item (or column) in the gradebook

There are several help sheets in this series. Start with Grades 1 - Introduction & Overview

Grade items are represented by columns in the Grader report.

Marking or returning marks through Moodle for a non-Moodle assessment

You might want to add a grade item for any assessment not directly related to a marked activity in Moodle, for example offline assignments, extra credit or tutor feedback, or to transfer marks from external assessment tools such as ExamSys,

One way of doing this is to add a 'Moodle Assignment' activity to your module page. Grades for this will automatically be included in the Gradebook. It can be useful, e.g., for returning grades and feedback for an offline assignment such as a presentation or lab work. See creating a Moodle assignment.

OR, don't create a new assignment, just add a column to the Gradebook. Creating a column (it's called a grade item) in the 'Grader Report' allows you to enter grades and make them visible to the students (or not, e.g., in the case of second marking) as appropriate.

To add a grade item (column)

In your module, click on 'Grades' on the module menu.
This will open the 'Grader report'.
At the top of the page, there is a dropdown menu. Select the dropdown arrow, then select 'Gradebook setup'
At the top of the screen you will see the option to 'Add grade item', click on it. This will create a new unpopulated column in the gradebook.
On the Grade item page, fill in the fields:
1. 'Item name'
2. 'Show more': Use Show more... to get additional options such as 'Grade to pass' , 'Overall decimal places' or to set dates it is 'Hidden until' and 'Locked after'.
3. 'Grade type': Choose a grade type e.g. 'Value', 'Text', 'Scale' or custom scale
4. 'Scale': Only applicable if scale selected in 'Grade type'
5. 'Maximum grade' / 'Minimum grades'
6. 'Hidden': You can choose to hide column for students
7. 'Lock': Is not relevant
Note: A hidden grade will not be visible to students – you can uncheck this to release the grades when you are ready, or enable a date to make all grades available to students on that date.
- Locking prevents changes to grades so it is unlikely that locking would be applied until the marking process is complete, if at all. For more information about locking or hiding grades see Grades 6: To hide a grade for a particular assignment, or a particular category of grades from the student.
- If you are using Categories you can choose (under Parent category) to include this item in an existing category. Select the Grade category from the drop-down list. (You can change this at a later date if you need to.) See Grades 5: How to add and use categories in the Grader report
Click on the 'Save changes' button.