12 Whole Forum vs. Rating Grading Methods
There are two main ways to grade discussion forums:
- Ratings
- Whole Forum Grading
Ratings are a more efficient way to grade discussion forums if you are actively participating in the discussion with the students and grading simultaneously; whereas, Whole Forum Grading is better for analyzing individual students’ posts within a different grading interface. One of the primary differences between the two methods is that Whole Forum Grading allows for an attached rubric to grade from; whereas, ratings rely on manual grade inputs as you are viewing each student’s posts. It is important to know that you should only use one grading method. If you use two by accident, duplicate entries will appear in your grade book.
Here is a brief overview of how to use the Ratings method for grading discussion forums:
If you would prefer to explore the Whole Forum Grading method, feel free to enable this feature by following the steps provided below:
Whole Forum Grading is a relatively new Grading Interface that was introduced to us in Moodle v3.8. To enable this, follow the steps below:
1. Navigate to your course
2. Turn Editing On
3. Navigate to the Forum that you would like to change
4. Select the Edit menu inline with the Forum activity, and select Edit Settings:
5. When a Forum is created, the default grading method is Ratings, you will want to turn this off. Navigate to the Ratings drop-down menu and change the Aggregate type to No Ratings:
6. Just above this drop-down menu, navigate to the Whole Forum Grading menu:
7. Once you expand this menu, select type as Point:
8. Then, choose the point value or Maximum Grade that you would like the assignment to be worth:
9. Lastly, scroll to the bottom and select a Save option:
Feel free to take it a step further and equip your discussion forum with a custom or prescribed rubric.
