Online or offline, grading in general can be pretty distressing. Grading assessments online can be trickier. The process is stressful because it is way more tedious and complicated than you might have thought; especially for teachers who are scrambling to get used to the whole online learning ‘thing’ on account of the pandemic. As a teacher with so many responsibilities to handle, grading in Moodle can be really maddening.
Grading in Moodle
Okay, here’s what can possibly bother you while grading in Moodle
Every new question of a student needs to be graded individually in a new tab. The unintuitive layout makes it even worse. It drastically slows down grading speed as well as feedback. Teachers often feel overwhelmed by these grading hassles in Moodle. The mounting stress does no good and only affects the quality of evaluation.
With all the hiccups to get started with grading in Moodle, teachers are in a fix on how to effectively assess and grade students online.
Taking grading seriously
Nothing against Moodle! Moodle is terrific for e-Learning. With Moodle, you could pretty much do everything – create courses, enroll students, upload study resources, conduct interactive learning sessions, take attendance and even sell courses. You can have a holistic e-Learning program set up for your students. But having good courses is just not enough to keep the learning progress in focus. Grading your students the right way is equally important.
Let’s get this straight!
Your effort in creating courses also probably goes for a toss without proper grading. How will you know how much your students have learned, how will you know if your teaching method is good enough? Error-free and timely grading is the answer.
As mentioned above, grading in Moodle is not as simple as it seems. You need to avoid certain errors that you might be unknowingly committing, in order to provide a well rounded educational experience to your students.
Let’s take a look at some common grading mistakes
Top Grading Mistakes to Avoid
#1 Assuming grades to be the only yardstick of understanding
- Problem:- Grades only tell one-side of the story
- Solution:- Have one-on-one sessions, take proactive feedback
Thinking good grades to be the only way to measure a student’s conceptual clarity is a big mistake you should avoid at all costs. Equating grades with partial understanding makes sense but using it as the only tool for evaluating learning success could be counter-effective.
In this case, it’s advisable to use as much interactive learning as possible to establish human contact with your student community. So, don’t just stick to the number game, diversify your grading, make it more interesting for your learners through gamification. Now that’s some real work for you but it could be very effective in the long run as it helps build an appropriate learning environment and foster critical thinking.
#2 Taking too long to provide grades and feedback
- Problem:- Students might not be able to relate feedback to the answers they’d given
- Solution:- Make grading a priority and try to asses tests within 1-2 days
The purpose of an assessment is not only to check the grasping capabilities of your students but also to give them a chance to introspect and know where exactly they stand and how they could improve. If students receive timely feedback, it gives them enough time to think where they went wrong, re-strategize, and make necessary changes in their study methods based on their score.
So, take your grading assessments seriously and finish them off on priority. Meaningful feedback can make a world of difference. Else this could be a potential reason why the learning interest of your students eventually fades away. It should ideally take you around 1-2 days to submit your grading results among your students. This is a good way to keep them engaged and connected with the course. Also, it is recommended to hand out their scores on time before they forget the responses or answers to their assessment questions.
#3 Not focusing on the best score
- Problem:- Considering the average score or the recent score may not align with the best updated knowledge of the student
- Solution:- To keep motivation going, pick the highest score where the student has given his absolute best
Averaging multiple scores or picking the score of a recent attempt is not a good idea. Simply because it does not reflect the student’s current or updated knowledge. Students lacking confidence can possibly try taking multiple test attempts. This shows their urge and willingness to perform better. You should make a note of this and consider only the top score of all the attempts taken. This could be instrumental in boosting the confidence levels of your students. Moreover, it keeps them motivated to study better.
#4 Focusing more on mistakes
- Problem:- Negative comments can make students lose confidence and eventually lose interest in learning as it is common to get bogged down by mistakes
- Solution:- Take the positive grading route and appreciate the good work done by the student and then gradually move towards constructive criticism
Aggressively highlighting the mistakes of your students is another potential red flag when it comes to grading. As content experts, you tend to hurry up with feedback due to the overwhelming amount of grading work you have. But the biggest fallout of taking this approach to grading is extreme frustration or dissatisfaction among students. Your students are already super-stressed about their grades and focusing more on their mistakes can make things worse. You don’t want your students to feel that they are not good enough.
The ideal way to go about this? Stick to the positives, to begin with. It is advisable to start off with the positive comments and congratulating your students on areas of the test where they have performed well. This way your students are hopeful and look forward to their feedback as it generates some amount of interest and tons of positive vibes along the way. Students love CREDITS. So, give credit where it’s due.
Another plus of starting on a positive note is that your students become willingly receptive to criticism. It then becomes much easier for you to highlight weaknesses and your students to voluntarily accept them. You can then point out the mistakes and help them learn from their mistakes.
#5 Skipping interactive discussions
- Problem:- Students might not be able to understand and grasp important concepts
- Solution:- Make it a point to conduct regular interactive discussions and doubt-solving sessions for better understanding of the core subject
Having one-on-one discussions was much easier in a traditional learning environment. Such interactions can get affected due to online learning as it is difficult to read the facial expressions of your students and conduct more dynamic interactive sessions. Nevertheless, it is a bad idea to skip feedback related discussions. When your students don’t get the right starting point after an online test score is out, they are bound to be more confused and tend to lose interest in learning. This can lead to students dropping off your e-Learning site.
Interactive online discourse or discussion board/forum for a quick resolution of doubts definitely helps your students know more about the test errors they made. It helps them get started in the right direction since they have more clarity on their test expectations. This way your students know that they can bank on you anytime to get their doubts resolved and improve their academic performance.
#6 Rigid grading ways
- Problem:- Having the same set of grading methods everytime can be boring and restricts the scope of having different types of assessments
- Solution:- Make grading easier and flexible with different grading techniques for different kinds of tests
Lack of a flexible grading system can complicate your grading hassles. For example, it is simple to grade objective type questions but you cannot apply the same technique while grading long paragraph and essay-type questions. This introduces a lot of redundancy in learning. So, don’t just stick to using simple checklist-based grading, explore new grading methods, and don’t be afraid to experiment with advanced grading techniques in Moodle.
Also, multiple grading techniques could be useful to diversify your assessments. This way your exam format is no longer limited to multiple-choice questions or quizzes. You can create a variety of tests and evaluate your students in a more holistic way based on multiple parameters.
#7 Grading everything
- Problem:- Grading unnecessary sections of an assessment can lead to wastage of time
- Solution:- Grade selectively and only grade what matters the most
As teachers, you’re already swamped with a lot of work apart from grading; And grading everything is going to add to your workload. Having to do extra work is not a problem. But this is futile extra work that will neither do any good to you nor to your students. All it will create is loads of stress due to additional grading overload. The more unnecessary evaluation you do, the more time you spend on grading assessments endlessly. The time wasted could be productively used elsewhere. This could possibly cause more delays in grading and leave your students waiting indefinitely for their results.
So, it is recommended to be selective and to quit evaluating things that need not be graded. You need to ensure that you’re only grading crucial quizzes and assessments. If required, you could go over other assignments and homework of your students but just a cursory glance should be more than enough in this case.
#8 Not analyzing grading performance
- Problem:- Students might not engage, do well in assessments or some would just drop off if they don’t like your courses or your way of teaching
- Solution:- Consistently analyze student performance in a systematic way to check if they are responding well to your teaching methods and course material
Taking everything into account, what’s the whole point of grading and accumulating crucial student scores if you don’t invest enough effort in analyzing their performance data! Many teachers unknowingly commit this mistake and fail to figure out what possibly hampered student engagement levels on their Moodle LMS. Not putting such important data to good use is definitely a mistake to avoid.
Analyzing these stats gives you a clear idea of how students are behaving on your e-Learning site or even responding to the different learning initiatives you take across your e-Learning program in Moodle. Gleaning key insights from student performance data and making crucial adjustments to your courses, course delivery, assessments, etc. can make a huge difference to student engagement levels. This eventually is key to enhanced course experience on Moodle. Just like how a student would introduce changes in his or her studying tactics to improve scores after receiving feedback from teachers. You need to analyze what part of your e-Learning program is bugging your students and then take steps to rectify it.
In Conclusion
Are you making these grading mistakes while grading your students in Moodle? Poor grading can take a toll on student motivation as well as learning accuracy. So, it’s best to get rid of them ASAP for an improved and meaningful course experience.
How’s your grading journey coming along? We understand that grading in Moodle can be a bit complicated and time-consuming. Therefore, feel free to try out these 7 simple grading strategies to save time and achieve faster, less stressful, and more dynamic grading in Moodle.
