moodle assignment marking guide

Documentation

Note: You are currently viewing documentation for Moodle 3.11. Up-to-date documentation for the latest stable version of Moodle may be available here: Marking guide .

• Marking guide

A marking guide (in the US 'grading guide') is an advanced grading method where a teacher enters a comment per criterion and a mark up to a maximum.

• 1 Selecting Marking guide
• 2.1 Adding more criteria
• 2.2 Adding frequently used comments
• 2.3 Marking guide options
• 3 Saving and using Marking guide
• 4 Editing or deleting Marking guide
• 5 Using templates
• 6 Duplicating the Marking guide
• 7 Marking assignments
• 8 How students view the marking guide

Selecting Marking guide

• Create an assignment, and in the Grades section, choose from the Grading method drop down menu the Marking guide option:

Creating a new Marking guide

• When the assignment has been created, and the Marking guide is selected as above, click Save and display and choose Define new grading form from scratch .
• (See section 5 for information on how to use a template.)

• Give the guide a name and description.
• Click on the criterion name to edit it. It will open up a box for typing into.
• Click the Click to edit links to provide an explanation for students and for markers as to what is required. It will open up a box for typing into.
• Click the Click to edit link to allocate a maximum mark for this criterion. It will open up a box for typing into.

Adding more criteria

• Click the button to add one or more criteria (and then repeat the process as above)

Adding frequently used comments

• If a teacher regularly uses the same comments when marking, adding them to a frequently used comments bank is possible.
• Click the Click to edit link and add a comment.
• Click the +Add frequently used comment button to add another one and repeat as needed:

Marking guide options

• By checking the appropriate boxes, it is possible to allow students to see (or not)the guide definition and how many marks are allocated per criterion.

Saving and using Marking guide

• Once completed, the guide may be saved as a draft or saved and made ready to use, according to the button selected at the bottom of the screen.

Editing or deleting Marking guide

• Once completed, a guide may be edited or deleted by going to Settings>Assignment administration>Advanced grading>Marking guide. Options appear to edit or delete the currently defined form.
• When an assignment has been graded, a warning appears if the guide is edited to check whether the assignments need to be regraded or not.

Using templates

• Those users with the capability Capabilities/moodle/grade:sharegradingforms (and perhaps Capabilities/moodle/grade:managesharedforms ) may save their forms as a template for others to use. They will see an additional option in Settings>Assignment administration>Advanced grading

(Note that teachers do not have these capabilities by default. )

• If templates have been made available, then on first accessing the Marking guide, teachers may select to "Create a new grading form from a template". Doing so will open up a search box to locate the desired template:

Duplicating the Marking guide

Note that frequently used comments will be duplicated when duplicating or restoring a Marking guide only from Moodle 2.6.2 onwards. Before this version, they were not copied over.

Marking assignments

• When the assignment to be graded is accessed in the usual way, the form appears with the criteria and an empty comments and score box. If frequently used comments have been added, the teacher clicks into the box and then clicks on the required comment to insert it:

How students view the marking guide

When students click on an assignment with a marking guide attached to it, they will see the marking guide as part of the information about their assignment. Thus, they can see the marking guide before they submit.

• School demo example of teacher view of Marking guide ready for usage (Log in as username teacher /password moodle )
• School demo example of student view of Marking guide to help with assignment (Log in as username student /password moodle )

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Topics Covered In This Article

Marking guide is an advanced grading method that allows an instructor to create a set of criteria for a Moodle assignment activity, optionally share these criteria in advance with students, and grade each criterion using a range of values. To speed up instructor feedback, instructors may setup lists of frequently used comments that can be added to criteria feedback simply by clicking on them.

Benefits to using marking guide:

• Grading criteria transparency, assuming the marking guide form is provided to students with the assignment description
• Improved grading consistency
• Reduce time spent grading
• Shorten commenting time

Setting Up The Marking Guide

1. While in a Moodle assignment activity, under the Gear menu in the top right lick on Advanced grading .

2. Set  Change active grading method  to to  Marking guide .

3. Click the  Define new grading form from scratch  button.

4. Enter in a  Name  and a  Description  for this Marking guide.

5. Enter in the following information for the criterion:

• Criterion name : Title for the criterion (e.g., Quality of references)
• Description for Students : Criterion description that students see along with their assignment description. This can be disabled below.
• Description for Markers : Criterion description that the grader will see. Note that the grader will also see the  Description for Students , so if they are identical then it is safe to leave this blank.
• Maximum mark : The minimum grade is always zero, and  Maximum mark  defines the maximum grade.

Click  Add criterion  to add additional criteria.

6. Enter in any  frequently used comments . Click  Add frequently used comment  to add additional comments. 

7. Set or unset the following options:

• Show guide definition to students : Determine whether students can see the marking guide criteria (criteria names, descriptions,  and  maximum marks) in the assignment.
• Show marks per criterion to students : Determine whether students can see the maximum marks for the criteria.

8. Click the  Save  button.

Using The Marking Guide - Grader View

To navigate to the marking guide to grade submissions, click on the assignment, click the  View all submissions  button, and click the  grade  button next to the student you wish to grade.

1. While grading a submission with the marking guide, the grader will see the following.

In this example there is only one criterion, but five or more are usually recommended. Also, only  description for students  is being used here for the  criterion description  while  d escription for graders,  which would normally appear immediately underneath it, is blank.

The grader can:

• Optionally, type in a comment for each criterion.
• Optionally, click on the plus symbols under  Frequently used comments  to insert comments where the cursor is located.
• Enter a grade.

2. The grader view also shows the following where the grader may:

• Turn on or off visibility of the grader and student criteria descriptions.
• See the current grade in the gradebook, if there is one.
• See which student is being graded out of how many.
• Leave a feedback comment that is intended for the submission as a whole.
• Optionally, notify students that their submissions have been graded. By default, students are notified by email.

Using the Marking Guide - Student View

After students' submissions have been graded, students will see the following:

NOTE!:  In the assignment, under Edit Settings > Grade > Grade Type , do not set the type to none or the student view will not show feedback or grades for each criteria. If an assignment is not graded, set it to Point or Scale and weight the assignment to zero.

Publishing A Marking Guide Form As A Template

Marking guides can be published as templates, making them available for use by anyone on the course site.

1. While in a Moodle assignment activity, under the Gear menu in the top right lick on  Advanced grading .

2. Assuming there is a marking guide form already created and saved, click the  Publish the form as a new template  button. If you do not see this button then you will need to create and save your marking guide form first.

Read the warning, and if you are comfortable with sharing your template with everyone click the  Continue  button.

Create New Marking Guide Form From Template

Click the  Create new grading form from a template  button. Note that if you do not see this button then you'll need to delete your current form first by clicking the  Delete the currently defined form  button.

3. It will show your saved templates. If you'd like to search the saved templates from others, optionally enter in search criteria, and click the  Search  button.

4. At the bottom of each template are  Use this template  and  Delete  buttons. Click the  Use this template  button to select this template for your own use or click the  Delete  button if you'd like to permanently delete this template.

Related Articles

• Page: Space Change Request (Equipment Moves)
• Page: Moodle - Whole Forum Grading (staff/faculty)
• Page: Computer Account Password
• Page: Moodle - Updating profile & preferences
• Page: Moodle - Finished Grading - Submitting Grades To Grade Approver (also, INC & EG)

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Moodle Marking Types

In Moodle, there are 3 primary methods in which teaching staff can mark graded student submissions, these include: 

• Simple direct grading
• Using rubric
• Using marking guide

Different grading methods

Simple direct grading is the most straightforward and simple method to understand and set up. As teaching staff begin to mark submissions, they can manually provide a numerical mark, no other steps are required. When the grader provides only a final grade and feedback to students, is the most commonly used grading method for a Moodle Assignment.

Rubrics or marking guides are recommended for high-stakes tasks, but simple direct grading is great for smaller assignments. It takes very little time to set up and enables grading assignments quickly using the quick grading function.

Marking with a rubric allows teaching staff to address several aspects of a student's assignment and assess them separately. Moodle will calculate the total aggregated grade from all the addressed aspects/criteria. Rubric marking makes the rationale behind the scores clear to students and to other markers of the same assignment. Rubrics can be time-consuming to set up as all criterion scores and descriptions must be created alongside the rubric.

A marking guide is very similar to a rubric, but it's simpler. For each marking criterion, a comment explains what is being sought, and provides a maximum mark that can be awarded.

Marking using a marking guide is more detailed and less subjective than awarding a single grade, but it's less time-consuming to set up. Students can be allowed to view the marking guide before they submit, so that they know what their learning priorities are in relation to this assignment.

Marking guides and rubrics are forms of standards-based assessment. Click the following link to find out more about  standards-based assessment .

Set activity with simple direct grading

By default, all activities are set with simple direct grading. These settings can be found in the "Grades" tab of the Settings page of any gradable activity.

Click ' Get Started' to view the step-by-step guide

Set activity with a rubric

A  rubric  is a set of marking criteria, for each of which several descriptive levels are defined and assigned points. It is presented as a table, with the criteria defined in rows and the levels and associated points defined in columns.

Mark a rubric graded activity

Activities that are set up with Rubric grading method are marked slightly different that direct grading method ones.

Set activity with a marking guide

A  marking guide  is a simpler form of rubric, which can also be created within Moodle.

Mark a marking guide graded activity

Grading activity that is set up with a marking guide is very similar to an activity with rubric, however, there are some differences. Marking guide allows to leave additional feedback for each criterion student is being graded with. Also, it allows to specify the grade out of the maximum allocated grade points.

How to edit rubric?

Rubrics can generally be edited up until they are used.

Issues can occur in Turnitin as old rubrics cannot be edited after they are used unless they are duplicated.

Create a duplicate of the rubric

Make changes to the duplicate in the Rubric Manager

Attach the new rubric to the activity.

If the activity has a previously attached rubric, attaching a new rubric may result in a loss of content

How to duplicate rubric?

Instructors can duplicate rubrics from the rubric manager in the activity’s settings.

Click ‘Launch Rubric manager’ in the activity’s settings

Select your rubric in the top left menu

Click ‘Duplicate this rubric’ in the top left menu

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Morningside Educational Technology

Moodle assignment feature: grading options (rubrics, marking guides).

This third post in a series of Ed Tech Blog posts focusing on different options within the Moodle Assignment Activity focuses on different types of grading functions.  So far this semester, I’ve introduced the options of the Download All, Offline Grading Sheet, and the batch upload features of this tool to help grading be a bit less time consuming (less downloading/uploading time).  Today I describe two “Advanced” grading features available in the Assignment Activity: Rubrics and Marking Guides.

Many of us use rubrics when creating our grading schemes especially for larger papers and projects.  Rubrics like this are very helpful for both instructors and students because they more deliberately outline the expectations for student work.  Research does demonstrate that the simple act of providing (and describing) rubrics prior to students beginning work on their projects can help to increase student performance (cite).  Of course the students need to actually pay attention and use these rubrics as they build and revise these projects, but it does help facilitate communication of expectations.

You can build your rubrics right into Moodle assignments in two ways: Rubrics (which creates boxes that you select) and Marking Guides (allows for ranges of scores to be placed in each criteria).  Here is a visual example of each type of advanced grading:

Moodle Rubrics:

Each level of each criteria has a description of the expectations and a set point value.  Instructors designing the rubric can determine the point value for each level. Rubrics make for quick grading because graders then simply click the level achieved by the student.  However, there is no option to alter the point values for each ‘cell.’

Moodle Marking Guides:

Criteria are listed and described and a total point value is determined for each criteria.  Graders are able to type in feedback into textboxes for individual criteria and for overall comments.  Graders are able to select a point value range that is allowed by each criteria.

The benefits of building in these types of grading structures within Moodle include being a bit more efficient with grading and scoring.  Moodle will automatically calculate the total score for you when you use these features. Rubrics are nice because graders can just click the cell they determine the student work to be at.  Additionally, you have the option of making these grading criteria for marking guides and rubrics visible to students within the assignment activity itself, so students are aware of how they will be evaluated.  Additionally, when students receive a grade they see the same rubric or marking guide and can see why they have missed points or done well.

Some weaknesses of using these grading structures include not being able to use the Offline Grading Sheet to batch upload grades.  You can still to a batch upload of feedback files, but because of the need to enter in the individual rubric criteria, the offline grading sheet is not possible.  Another weakness specifically with the Rubric option is that the points allocated to each cell cannot be altered when grading. What I mean by this is that clicking a rubric cell is an all-or-none action.  Keeping this in mind when building the rubric is important. In my own use, I have found that I sometimes ended up giving much higher or lower scores than I believed was really warranted because I was tied to the points on the rubric and these did not allow me to give more nuanced grades.  I personally tend to find the Marking Guide a nice compromise to this issue because I am able to give a range of points within a grading criteria.

Building these can be a bit time consuming and I would recommend including these in your courses after you have built up most of the rest of your course first.  You can always grade using the simple grading method. It is also possible to create rubrics that you use for multiple assignments (for example, the same rubric is used for all drafts of a paper or is used for all of a particular type of assignment).  Below is a series of videos on how to create Rubrics and Marking Guides in Moodle.

Creating a Rubric in Moodle    [Scroll down to see how to Create a Marking Guide]

Creating a marking guide in moodle.

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Assignment marking guide 'Show/Hide marker/student criterion descriptions' checkbox options not holding selection when changes are saved

• Resolution: Unresolved
• Fix Version/s: None
• Affects Version/s: 4.0.5
• Component/s: Assignment , Grading methods
• external_confirmed
• Affected Branches: MOODLE_400_STABLE

Description

Assignments set to use marking guides — when grading them —  have options to Show/Hide marker/student criterion descriptions in the PDF annotator grading form:

By default both the marker and student descriptions are set to show and when you toggle them, the descriptions appear/disappear on demand as one might expect. If however you toggle them to hide and then save the grading page, it appears to not hold that choice in place visually and reverts them back to show. 

Replicated on 4.0.5, 3.11.6 and 3.10.3 Moodle environments 

STEPS TO REPLICATE: 

• Ensure there is at least one Student user enrolled in a test course
• Add an Assignment activity to the course page. Set required fields and ensure under Grade >> Grading method it is set to 'Marking guide'. Save and display.
• In the advanced grading section of the assignment where you define a new marking guide, click to 'define a new marking guide from scratch'. Name the guide, add as many criterion levels as you wish, provide meaningful marker/student criterions to properly observe changes noted in last two steps below then click 'Save marking guide and make it ready' when done
• Go to 'View all submissions' page within the Assignment activity and submit something on behalf of a student.
• Grade this student such to bring up the PDF annotation interface. Add some data to the marking guide fields, and toggle the Show/Hide marker/student criterion descriptions without saving. Observe that they show/hide these criterion descriptions as advertised.
• With the marker/student criterion descriptions set to show, set them to hide and then click 'Save' at the bottom of the page. Observe that the radio buttons revert back to show

OBSERVED BEHAVIOUR:

Show/Hide marker/student criterion descriptions options in Assignment activities set for marking guide grading revert to show when the submission is saved

EXPECTED BEHAVIOUR:

Show/Hide marker/student criterion descriptions options should ideally save and the display toggle opted for should visually hold

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How to Use Moodle’s Marking Workflow

Jason Hogan

If you use Moodle’s Assignment activity you may have seen this option in the Grade settings:

You may have asked yourself: what is the marking workflow? When should I use it? How do I use it? Let’s answer those questions!

What is the Marking Workflow?

The marking workflow is a setting that allows assignment graders to stage the marking process into specific states: not marked; in marked; marking completed; in review; ready for release; and released. These states control whether or not students can see their grades and feedback. The state of a student’s assignment is visible to other instructors in the course.

When should I use it?

The marking workflow serves two primary functions:

• Coordinating with student graders, or other instructors
• Releasing assignment grades and feedback at the same time for the whole class.

If either of things appeal to you, this is a setting you want to enable.

How do I Use the Marking Workflow?

Setting up Marking Workflow The first step to using the marking workflow is to enable it on your assignment activity. This setting can be found in the Grade Section. The default for “Use marking workflow” is No, change it to Yes to enable it.

Using Marking Workflow Now that it’s enabled, we’ll have a couple more options when we view and grade student assignments. When grading an individual assignment we have an additional dropdown menu on the grading screen:

With this dropdown menu we can set a workflow state for that individual student (or group if it’s a group assignment). Whenever a student submits an assignment it will start in the Not Marked state.

If you are the only grader you could use this for a workflow, shifting the state from Not Marked to Ready for Release once you have finished grading a student. Shifting to Release will let the student see their grade and feedback once you save the changes.

If you have student graders or multiple instructors are grading assignments you may want to work out a system for the workflow states, such as a student grader setting the assignment to “In review” or “Marking completed” once they have finished marking the assignment.

In the View All Submissions page there are additional options as well. One note is that the additional option of being able to filter by Marking Workflow state:

With the workflow filter you can view or select all all assignments that have a workflow state. For example you may use this to review a student grader’s marking by setting the filter to your agreed upon reviewing workflow state. Another use of the filter is to quickly select all assignments of a state to change their state. For example selecting all “Ready to be released” assignments so they can be released at once.

How to Release Grades One of the benefits of a marking workflow is being able to release the grades and feedback for all students at once. (Note that you can pair this with filtering submissions by Workflow State: Ready to Release if you are using that state and following all of the next steps).

Begin by making sure that no other filters are applied, you may need to press “Reset table preferences” to do so. If you are using the Ready to Release workflow state, set the workflow state filter to “Ready to Release” otherwise leave that as No Filter.

Check the top level Select box to select all submissions

Scroll to the bottom of the spreadsheet and open the “With Selected…” dropdown filter and choose the option “Set marking workflow state” and then press Go

On the next page you will see the students names, scroll to the bottom of the list and change the workflow state to “Released”. You will likely want to change Notify Students from No to Yes as well

Do students see the Marking Workflow state?

Yes! It’ll appear on their submission page in a section called “Grading Status”. This may be a consideration for you as you use these workflows.

Written by Jason Hogan

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Making the most of Moodle’s Assignments for formative and summative assessment

Moodle’s assignment activities are easy to set up and offer many possibilities to create unique learning experiences for your students.

The Assignment activity in Moodle allows students to submit work for their teachers to grade or assess. The learners’ submissions may be text typed online or uploaded files of any format that the teachers specify. While creating an Assignment is quite straightforward, this activity has several settings that educators can combine to create unique experiences for their learners. 

Moodle Assignment for formative and summative assessment

Because it has so many combinations of configuration, the Assignment activity can be used both for formative assessment and summative evaluation. The table below outlines the goals and characteristics of each type of assessment: 

In formative assessment the goal is to monitor student learning therefore the assignments should be set to be always available, without necessarily being graded, allowing additional attempts, with no pass grade required (if it is graded). The  activity completion is usually set to “view” or “submit”. An formative assignment such as this often gets a 0% weight in the gradebook. 

In summative assessment, the goal is to evaluate student learning via assessment, thus a summative assignment is usually  set up with clear start, end and cut-off dates. It will be graded, with additional attempts to re-open the assessment set manually. Summative assessments are usually set with a required pass grade and the activity completion linked to requiring a “grade”. Summative assignments often have a weight higher than 20% in the gradebook.

Moodle Assignment submissions

There are many ways to combine submission types and settings in Assignment activity to achieve your teaching and learning goals or simply streamline your class management:

Assignments with no submission required These are assignments where learners don’t have to submit anything to complete the assessment. While this may sound counterintuitive, this type of Assignment can be used, for instance, for offline assessment -use it as an attendance sheet on a field trip- or for example, to assess a face-to-face speaking Assignment where learners really don’t have anything to submit. 

Assignments with online text submission With this type of Assignment submissions, learners add their work directly into the Assignment activity using the Atto editor, a rich text editor that allows learners to write text, add images and even record audio or video files. For this and for all other submission types, you can enable an option to allow learners to work in draft versions of their Assignment before sending the final submission.

Assignments with file submission This type of submission for Assignments requires learners to submit a file -teachers can define its format and size- for teachers to evaluate. To streamline the grading process, teachers can download all submissions at once, including a grading worksheet that displays the user name, email and submission status and allows teachers to add a grade and feedback in comments – and then bulk-upload all assessments back to Moodle, including a separate feedback file for each submission.

Group assignments in Moodle Collaborative learning is at the heart of Moodle LMS, so Moodle Assignments can easily be set up to be submitted as a group. Teachers can set these Assignments up so that only one of the group members has to submit the file, or make it mandatory for each team member to make the submission. Favourite tip: Our Moodle Academy team recommends combining this type of Assignment with a peer evaluation to know how the experience was for each of the group members.

Grading Moodle Assignments

Moodle Assignments support two main types of grading: simple direct grading and advanced grading. The first group includes grading done through numerical scales, custom scales (for example, stars or words like weak , satisfactory , strong , etc) or no grading at all. Advanced grading methods in Moodle include rubrics and marking guides, and we’ll look at them in more detail:

Moodle Assignment: assessment with marking guides In this type of grading, the teacher defines a series of criteria and assigns a maximum amount of marking points to each. When assessing learners’ assignments, the teachers provide both a numerical mark and a comment for each of the criteria. For this type of grading, you can make the criteria and maximum marking points available for learners to see – this helps them know what’s expected from them and what they need to cover in their submission. Favourite tip: Use ‘frequently used comments’ to speed up your grading process and to ensure that your grading is consistent.

Moodle Assignment: assessment with rubrics For grading with rubrics, teachers create a set of criteria with several levels of achievement, all displayed on a table. Sharing the rubric with learners is important, as it lets learners know how they’ll be assessed. For each submission, the rubric will be displayed to teachers, who then can select the level of accomplishment for each of the criteria just by clicking on it, as well as leave written feedback if necessary.

Moodle Assignment: assessment with marking workflow When you set up a marking workflow for an Assignment, it means that learners’ work can be assessed by several teachers. You can manually design the workflow and define the sequence of states (eg not marked , in marking , marked ), as well as allocate marking to another teacher.

This content has been extracted from the Moodle Academy webinar Assessment: exploring Assignments, facilitated by Moodle Education Advisor Anna Krassa. Watch the full webinar on our Moodle Academy site to see 7 real life examples on how you can combine submission types and grading types with availability and different types of feedback to create the right Assignment for your teaching and learning goals .

Upcoming Moodle Academy Webinar ABC Learning Design 17 November 2021

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• Assessment & Feedback

Advanced Grading in Moodle

Published on: 19/09/2023 · Last updated on: 19/06/2024

What is advanced grading?

Advanced grading is a grading method that can be used in Moodle Assignments and Forums.

Advanced grading allows Moodle Teachers to define one of two grading forms – either a Marking guide or a Rubric .

• Example marking guide
• Example rubric

In this example marking guide, you can see predefined criteria, with allocated marks and space to enter feedback comments

How do staff and students use it effectively?

Clear marking criteria will help students understand what any particular assessment task is looking for. Marking guides and Rubrics can help ensure assessment guidelines, success criteria and next steps are clear for students and staff.

Staff can decide which options they use when setting up their Marking guide or Rubric but we would recommend you consider the following:

• Choose the setting to make the criteria descriptions visible to students in advance, and let them know that they can view these by accessing the assignment submission point.  You may need to highlight to them how to view the marking criteria at the early stages.  
• If you’re using the Rubric or Marking guide for formative feedback, you can choose to hide the points awarded from students.
• It’s important to include feedback comments and to personalise the feedback provided.  You can choose how to use the rubric and marking guide in combination with feedback comments. You can either have feedback comments for each assessment criterion, or you can make an overall feedback comment. 

In this example rubric, you can see a simple rubric with criteria and levels selected. You can add feedback comments for each criterion.

How might I use it?

To get set up, please view the following guidance videos:

Watch this short video [6 mins 17 secs] which demonstrates how the set up a Rubric:

Rubrics – Advanced marking in Moodle video

Watch this short video [7 mins] which demonstrates how the set up a Marking guide:

Marking guide – Advanced marking in Moodle video

Downloading marked grading forms

Although you can see completed rubrics and marking guides inside of each student’s grading page, it is also possible to see and download the associated grades and feedback for all your students in one go. 

• In the Course navigation menu, click onto the Grades tab
• Select either Rubrics Report or Marking Guide Report (as appropriate) from the drop down menu at the top of the page
• Select the activity you wish to view the feedback for and press the Submit button

All relevant grading information appears on the screen, and can be downloaded for offline review.

Reusing grading forms

The Advanced grading tab within an assignment or forum activity enables Moodle Teachers to select or switch between grading methods.  If you have selected an advanced grading method on this page (rubric or marking guide) a management screen will appear.

To use an existing grading rubric or marking guide, select Create new grading form from a template.

By default, a number of pre-defined templates will appear, however a search function located at the top of the page will enable you to search for and reuse your own rubrics and marking guides.

Note : Only rubrics and marking guides that you have previously been marked as ‘Ready for usage’ (i.e. that are attached to an existing activity) can be re-used this way.

Sharing grading forms with others

At the current time, there is no export/import option for rubrics and marking guides, however the workaround is to create a new activity (such as an assignment) and attach the relevant grading form to it. You can then create a backup of this activity and share the resulting .mbz file with others.

By restoring the activity , the attached grading form is restored too.

Note:   If you delete all of the activities that make use of a specific rubric or marking guide, you also delete all copies of that grading form.

The main difference between a Marking Guide and Rubric is the points/marks awarded for each criterion. For the Rubric, only a set number of points can be awarded depending on the preset levels of each criterion. In a Marking Guide the grader can choose the points awarded up to the maximum points allowed for the given criterion.  

Marking Guide 

• You can set up a marking guide in Moodle using the Advanced Grading options. 
• In Moodle, the marking guide is a feedback form where you can describe the learning outcomes or assessment criteria. The form provides a box to enter feedback comments for each criterion. 
• You can allocate a maximum mark for each criterion. 
• The marking guide allows you to build up a bank of frequently used comments. 
• General feedback and criteria comments can be made visible to students.
• Can be re-used and/or shared with colleagues.

Rubric 

• You can set up a rubric in Moodle using the Advanced grading options. 
• In Moodle, the rubric is presented in a grid format. There are rows for the different assessment criteria or learning outcomes, and columns for the expected performance levels. 
• You can assign a score to each performance level. 
• You can decide whether to display the breakdown of marks to students, or just the descriptors. 
• The overall mark is calculated by the rubric. 
• A well-constructed rubric can speed up the marking process, improve consistency of feedback and provide the student with a clear explanation of their final grade.

Staff can decide which options they use but we would recommend you consider the following.

• It’s important to share the marking criteria with students before the assessment. You may need to highlight to them how to view the marking criteria at the early stages.
• Choose the setting to make the rubric or criteria descriptions visible to students in advance, and let them know that they can view these by accessing the assignment submission point.
• If you’re using the rubric or marking guide for formative feedback, you can choose to hide the points awarded per criterion from students (they will still see the total grade awarded).
• You can use the rubric or marking guide in combination with a Letter scale to provide indicative feedback (for example Pass or Fail) instead of a percentage mark.
• You can choose how to use the rubric in combination with feedback comments, so you can either have feedback comments for each assessment criterion, or you can make an overall feedback comment. It’s important to include feedback comments, to personalise the feedback provided.
• You could also choose to annotate the submitted assignments, as the rubric and marking guide can be used in combination with the other feedback methods in Moodle.

No, Moodle will scale the rubric/marking guide score to 100 even if your rubric/marking guide doesn’t add up to 100 (assuming you haven’t changed this in the assignment settings) e.g. an assignment with a rubric/marking guide that scores 20/40 will appear as 50/100 in the gradebook and for SAMIS transfer.

The  rubric  will work out the marks based on the points awarded for each criterion. When you create the rubric, you will be able to determine the points each level is worth.

For example, if you have chosen the levels in the green boxes for each criterion, the student would receive a mark of 6/9, this will appear as 66.7/100 in the gradebook and for SAMIS transfer.

The  marking  guide will work out the marks based on the points decided by the grader, the grader can only give a score up to the maximum marks.

For example, if the grader awards a mark of 7 on the assignment below, the student will receive a mark of 7/10, this will appear as 70/100 in the gradebook and for SAMIS transfer.

Some rubrics identify a percentage weighting for each criterion (or level) but this is not obvious in a Moodle Rubric.

You can modify the weight of any criterion by setting the value of the points assigned to its levels. If there is one criterion with levels 0, 1, 2, 3 and the second one with levels 0, 2, 4, 6 then the latter’s impact on the final grade is twice as much as the former’s.

Note that Moodle will always scale to 100 (the Assignment default).  It’s recommended to leave the total score at 100 in order to use the grade transfer functionality. 

No. Both these assessment methods must be completed online in Moodle’s grading screen.  If you would like to export submissions to work and mark offline you will need to mark with Simple direct marking .  

Marking guide:  Yes, a marking guide can be edited once in use. A warning will appear if the marking guide has already been used for grading and will ask you if the assignment needs to be regraded or not. 

Rubric:  Yes, but editing the levels or values of the criterion will not change the grade book value already given to students. The assignment will need to be regraded.

This depends on how the markers want to work.

Double (not blind) marking could use a marking guide where each marker adds a feedback comment with their initials.

In rubrics you can choose to have feedback comment boxes for each criterion, but only show these to markers.  These could be used to explain ‘levels’ chosen for moderation with other markers.

Yes, in the Marking guide, other graders on the unit will be able to see and use the frequently used comments saved for that assignment.

Yes. You can search your own grading forms in the search box. This way, you can simply re-use your grading forms. Only forms marked as ‘Ready for usage’ can be re-used this way.

Click Create new grading form from template.

Click the box to include your own forms and click Search.  Then select the link to use the form.

Each time you reuse a marking guide or rubric, a new version is created.  This means you can edit the new version without it affecting any of the previous versions.

To re-use a marking guide or rubric in a different Moodle course you will have to Backup and Restore the activity.

Only the Marking Guide option gives you the chance to use ‘frequently used comments’.  If a teacher regularly uses the same comments when marking, it is possible to add these to a frequently used comments bank. 

• Click the Click to edit link and add a comment. 
• Click the +Add frequently used comment button to add another one and repeat as needed. 

When you reuse a marking guide the frequently used comments will be duplicated for reuse too. 

Read a  case study about using a rubric for open ended assessment .

Further reading

• Moodle Doc: Advanced Grading Methods
• Brookhart, S.M., Chapter 1. What Are Rubrics and Why Are They Important? [Online] Chapter Preview In: How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading, USA: ASCD. Available from: www.ascd.org

Related Articles

• Anonymous marking in Moodle
• Group Peer Review for Teachers
• How to mark an Assignment offline and upload feedback
• Using Ouriginal
• How to create an Assignment
• How to release grades and feedback

Article Contents

• LEaD events
• IT Self Service Portal

Moodle Assignment feedback guide

• Get started - Moodle Assignment feedback
• Hide grades and feedback
• Late submissions
• Use Marking workflow
• Grade Using the Grading page
• Grade with Moodle Marking Record

Moodle Marking record

Hide grades and feedback for an assignment, access submissions page, access student submission, grade with marking record, upload feedback file and add general comments, navigate between student submissions, release grades and feedback for assignment, release grades and feedback (anonymous submissions), student view of marking record feedback, related guidance.

• Grade with Moodle Rubric
• Quick grading
• Track changes on Word document and / or adding feedback to a coversheet
• Upload feedback and grades via Excel spreadsheet
• Upload offline feedback files individually
• Group Assignment feedback and grading
• Release grades and feedback

A Marking record is used to assess a student's work against a set of marking criterion. The criterion explain what is required of the student and a maximum mark that can be awarded for each criterion is provided.

Personalised feedback and grades are added for each criterion and 'frequently added comments' can also be added. Marking using a marking record is more detailed and less subjective than awarding a single grade. 

Students can view the Marking record before they submit their assignment, so that they know what their learning priorities are in relation to the assignment.

• Select Grades in the contextual navigation menu above the module name. The Grader report page opens
• Open the drop-down menu on the left of the page and choose Gradebook setup .
• Select the Edit link on the same row as the name of the grade item you are marking.
• Select Hide .

• Open the assignment from the module page. This opens the Grading summary page.

• Select the  View all submissions button to view the Submissions page.
• If you cannot see all the submissions you expect, check to see whether a filter has been applied. Filters can follow you from one module to another, and if another user has added a filter, it may still be in place. Remove the filters to see all submissions.
• Alphabetic filter . Select All for both the First Name and Surname to clear

• Options . Open the Filter drop-down menu, select No filter to clear any existing filter.

• After the assignment deadline, select the Grade button for the student you want to grade.
• The grading page for the student will open.
• The grading page should display a message:  This grade and feedback (if present) is hidden in the Grader Report and is not available to the student. 
• It this message does not display, go to Gradebook setup  (by selecting Grades on the contextual navigation menu, open the Grader Report drop-down menu, select  Gradebook setup ) and select Edit opposite the assignment name. Hide the assignment grade item.

For assignments where the Anonymous submissions has been enabled, a unique Participant ID will be generated by Moodle to replace the student name.

In the Grade section, each of the criterion for the marking record will be displayed.

• If both marker and student criterion were added when the assignment was set up, choose whether to show or hide each set of criterion while grading by selecting the appropriate radio button next to Show/Hide for each set.
• For each criterion, add feedback into the feedback input field.
• Each criterion is graded out of the score displayed alongside the score input field. Add a score for each criterion into the score input field. The Marking record calculates the overall grade based on grades input.
• If frequently used comments were added when the marking record was set up, they will be displayed under the criterion. To add a frequently used comment to the feedback, select the relevant feedback input field and then select the required comment in the frequently used comments list. The comment will be added to the feedback input field.
• Do not uncheck the Notify students box. Your feedback and grade is hidden as you selected to hide the Grade item at the start of this process.
• Select Save changes or Save changes and show next to move to the next student.

You can use the Feedback comments input field to provide general feedback and upload an external feedback file. 

• Type any overall feedback for the student's submission into the Feedback comments input field.
• To upload an external feedback file select the file icon under Feedback files and select your file to upload, or drag and drop your feedback into the feedback area.
• Select  Save and show next to move onto the next student to upload feedback and add grade in Moodle.
• Do not uncheck the Notify students box. Your feedback and grade is hidden as you selected to hide the Grade item at the start of this process.

Audio and video feedback

You can also provide up to 2 minutes of multimedia feedback by selecting the microphone icon or the camera icon from the text editor toolbar on the Feedback comments field. These files do not produce captions so you will need to provide written feedback for students to ensure that the feedback is accessible to all students. Students are not able to download multimedia feedback provided via the text editor in the Feedback comments input field.

Tips to prepare audio feedback

• Focus on the quality of the feedback as opposed to the quality of the recording . Don’t feel like you have to correct small speaking errors by re-recording. You can correct these as you would do in conversation. Do avoid poor quality audio as this can deter from the quality of your feedback.
• Structure your feedback . Prepare a draft of the key points you would live to cover before you record.
• Try to stay positive . Even when providing developmental feedback try to end on a positive note.
• Speak clearly .
• Make explicit how the feedback can contribute to the student's development .

There are two ways to navigate between student assignments submissions within the grading page of the assignment.

• You can use the Save and show next to move  button at the end of the grading screen to save your feedback and move onto to the next student submission.

• Select  Grades  in the contextual navigation menu above the.
• Select the  Grader Report  drop-down menu and choose  Gradebook setup .
• Select the  Edit  link on the same row as the name of the grade item you are marking.
• Select Show.

This makes the grades and feedback visible and generates an email to students to alert them to their released grade and feedback.

When an assignment is set up with anonymous marking, you must unhide the grade item  and reveal student identities in order to release grades and feedback.

• Select  Grades  in the contextual navigation menu above the module name.
• Select the link to the assignment to open it.
• Select  View all submissions .

When you release feedback and grades to students for an assignment marked with a Marking record, each student will be able to access their feedback and grades via the link to Grader Report in the Module Dashboard. Each student will be able to view.

• Their total grade for the assignment.
• Any general feedback entered.
• Any feedback files added.
• Feedback against the fields in the marking record. If the student selects the assignment they can view the scores for each of the Marking record criterion.

• Create Marking Guide
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• Last Updated: Aug 21, 2024 12:48 PM
• URL: https://city-uk-ett.libguides.com/staff/moodle/assignment-feedback