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Set up forum grading

Discussion boards may be used throughout the unit where students’ contributions are assessed at the end of the semester or set up as individually graded assessments. They may also be used as a peer assessment tool where students provide feedback on an individual student’s work or on collaborative work.

Both Forums and Open forums have a Grade section. When you select this a grade item will be automatically created in the Moodle Gradebook. Click on the accordion below to learn more about how to set up forum grading for your forum activity.

If you have enabled grading in the forum activity settings, a grade item will automatically be created in the Moodle Gradebook, and you will be able to enter grades for a student based on their forum posts.
From your forum activity, click on Grade users to navigate to the Forum grading window.
Similar to the assignment grading screen, the forum grading screen displays posts from an individual student on the left side of the screen and grading tools on the right side.
Click on the plus icons below to learn more
1. Navigate between students using the arrows, or click on the search icon to search for a specific student.
2. On the left hand side, you can view all forum posts created by an individual student. The discussion forum which students posted in will appear as large headings, including the creator of the discussion forum and date which it was created. For each forum post, the subject line, date and time and text of the forum post will be displayed.
  If the post is a reply, click View parent post to view the original post the reply is in response to or click View discussion below the post to see the post in context of the whole discussion thread.
3. In the grading window, enter grades for the student. You can also set up advanced grading in the Forum activity settings. For more information about advanced grading, see Marking, grading & rubrics.
4. In the Notification settings, you can choose to notify a student of their grade. You can change the default for notifications in the Forum activity settings.
5. You can choose to hide or display the right hand panel.
6. Click Save to save your grading changes.
7. Click Close to return to the forum activity.
  Note: Ensure you click save before closing to save any grades you have entered.
1. In the Grade section, from the Grade type drop down list, select Manual or Rating.
  - Manual: You can only grade via manually entering grades in the grader report.
  - Rating: Students can rate each other’s posts. Follow the Enabling students to rate posts instructions in the section below enable students to rate each other’s posts.
2. Select other grade settings, such as whether to grade by scale or point and maximum grade as needed.
3. Complete the other sections as needed.
4. Click Save and display.

Note

There is a current bug that allows students to see their grade for forums that have grading enabled even if the grade has been hidden in the Gradebook. Ensure you ONLY enter grades once you are ready for students to see their grade.

Enable students to rate posts

Forum posts can be rated by academics or students for peer evaluation. Ratings can be aggregated to form a final grade which is recorded in the gradebook.

Change permission settings

By default only the lecturer in Moodle can rate a post. If you want students to be able to rate each other's post, you would need to change the permission settings in the Forum settings.

In the top right menu, click More and then select Permissions.
You will need to add Student to Roles with permission for Add ratings to items and Rate posts. You may need to scroll down to find Rate posts.
Click on the plus icon to add a role.
Select Student. If the student role has already been granted permission, it will be greyed out.