TEACHING & LEARNING COMMONS KNOWLEDGE BASE

Overview of Mastery Grading in Moodle Gradebook

Here is the step by step video guide on setting up Moodle gradebook using Competency-based grading.

To follow along with the video, or to see how this is set up in Moodle, please self-enroll in the following course: Moodle Gradebook Setup for Mastery-based Grading (MAS/NCG)

1) Introduction

This article was created to assist faculty seeking support to set up their Moodle gradebook using competency-based grading, a subsection of mastery-based grading scale. In effect, competency-based grading and mastery-based grading are the same thing, you are evaluating the student on whether they have mastered a specific competency: KSA (knowledge, skill, and/or attitude), as it relates to the assignment and constructively-aligned with the learning outcomes for the course.

Mastery-based grading is however GPA-neutral. This means that there is no numerical grade assigned to assessment components. This is similar to binary systems such as Pass/Fail or Experience/No Credit Granted (EXP/NCG), which are often found with practicums and trades-based programs. 

KPU’s AC4 Policy on Student Evaluation and Grading outlines the following for Mastery Grading System: 

“A competency-based grading system given to courses that demand a clearly defined high standard of performance, in which the student must demonstrate mastery of all knowledge and/or performance requirements.”

Mastery (MAS) is defined as: “Student has met and mastered a clearly defined body of skills and performances to required standard.”

No Credit Granted (NCG) is defined as: “Student has not met the required standard for the course and/or has not participated to the required level in course activities.”

Moodle Gradebook, however, is based on a percentage system. To work around this, we suggest using a rubric and an associated scale, combined with adjusting the letter grades in the gradebook. This article will outline how this can be done.

2) Rubric Set Up

Overview

The mastery grading scale requires two letter grades. They are "MAS" for mastery and "NCG" for non-credit granted. As previously stated, Mastery-grading is GPA-neutral, but your assessment tool, the rubric, would still have competencies to be evaluated as well as a “score” in the form of a “0” or “1” for NCG and MAS categories, respectively.

Scales

We recommend the rubric rating scales be created with four performance levels collapsed into NCG/MAS. The reason for this is that having a binary scale (NCG/MAS) is not a pedagogically-sound evidence-based practice and would likely serve to penalize the student and not be an accurate reflection of their competency in a particular area, or rather the degree to which they have mastered it. 

These labels are a suggestion, and you can certainly use other labels that you feel are appropriate for your needs. The recommendation though is to use positive and progressive labels that naturally scaffold into each other, with the lowest level to the left and the highest to the right.

As such, the recommendation is to have 4 performance levels. Students who are "not meeting" or "developing" would be awarded NCG, and those who earn "meeting" or "exceeding" as MAS. 

This way, students who are awarded "developing" for a given competency will have more guidance to accomplish “meeting” or “exceeding” for that competency, and students at the “meeting” area will know they have met the expectations for that competency and can see what more they can do to really excel and be at the “exceeding” level.

This is what your rubric might look like as a result:

Please ensure the competencies (A,B,C & D) listed to the left of the table relates to the Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes (KSAs) in the course learning outcomes and they also correspond with the level of complexity of the action verb of the learning outcome.   

To accommodate grading for a non-submission of an assignment, we recommend you add a separate performance level “Not Submitted” and award an NCG grade.

As per the above example, the student has two NCG scores (competency A and competency D), they would be ineligible for a MAS grade for this assignment as all competencies must be at least “meeting” in order to be considered as mastery (despite achieving MAS in competencies B and C). But what this does do, as mentioned before, is provide both the student and instructor valuable feedback and insight into where the student is currently at and possibly some indication of supports needed.

3) Front End Set up of the Rubric in Moodle

 We will now look at how to actually set the rubric up in your Moodle gradebook (the front-end). Please note that there are some back-end components which you will be unable to set up, but the T&L Commons is more than happy to assist you with those parts.

Overview

There are two options you can choose, one is using a Global Mastery Template, which is much of what is sounds – it is a pre-set-up template that has been applied globally to a set of courses. For example, the NRSG Program might decide that they want a standardized rubric to be used for all courses that require journals. As such, you would select that specific “Mastery” rubric to be included in your gradebook.

The second option is creating your own custom rubric for your assignment. We recommend creating the rubric in Word, or a similar application first, for ease, and then once you have created your rubric template in Moodle, you can copy and paste your rubric content into Moodle from Word. This might be easier for you that building the rubric in Moodle due to the specific way you view and create items within Moodle.

Let’s take a step-by-step look at how to implement these two options.

Option 01: Using a Global Mastery Template in Moodle

As you may recall, using a Global Mastery Template, means you are adding a pre-completed templated rubric to your course that is standardized for that assignment and is consistent with the same assignment type in other courses.

One, from the course main page, click to slide Edit mode (upper right corner, just below the gear/settings icon) to enable editing.

Two, go to the section that you would like to have this Global Mastery Template assigned to. Once there, towards the bottom left of the section, click Add an activity or resource. 

Three, in the window that pops open, the “Activity or Resource Picker,” click Assignment (upper right corner).

Four, in the new screen, name your assignment, then scroll down and under the “Grade” heading, set the type to be scale, and then choose the global standardized scale, named whatever your department has elected to call it, but for our purposes we will say Custom Mastery Scale. Then set the “Grading method” to be rubric.

Five, at the bottom, click Save and display.

Six, from the next page, click on Create new grading form from a template (the option on the right).

Seven, search for the grading forms/templates that you want to use by clicking Use this template found underneath each available option.

Eight, in the new screen that open, you will be asked to confirm that you want to use that specific grading form you selected (and you will also again see a preview of it). Click continue.

There you go, now this template is associated with that assignment and can be used to evaluate the student accordingly.

Option 02: Creating a Custom Rubric

As you may recall, creating a custom rubric, means you are creating and building your own rubric from scratch in Moodle and assigning that rubric to one of your assignments. As previously mentioned, we would recommend building out the rubric and competency content in Word or similar application and then copying the content over into Moodle once you’ve reached Steps 8-10.

One, from the course main page, click turn editing on (upper right corner).

Two, go to the section that you would like to have this Global Mastery Template assigned to. Once there, towards the bottom right, click Add an activity or resource.

Three, in the window that pops open, the “Activity or Resource Picker,” click Assignment.

Four, in the new screen, name your assignment, then scroll down and under the “Grade” heading, set the type to be scale, and then choose the scale type (named whatever your department has elected to call it, or one of your own), but for our purposes we will say Custom Mastery Scale. Then set the “Grading method” to be rubric.

Five, at the bottom, click Save and display.

Six, from the next page, click on Define new grading form from scratch. 

Seven, from the “Rubrics options” section, uncheck the following two (2) boxes:

            Display points for each level during evaluation

            Display points for each level to those being graded

Eight, to add criteria, click the +Add criterion button from the rubric to edit the criteria, click into the text box and add your text. 

Nine, to add a level, click the +Add level button (right side of the row of that criterion), and to edit the boxes, click the boxes and begin to add your text. Please also ensure that you include an initial column at the start (the far left) labelled Not submitted and would be valued at 0 points. This is to accommodate grading for students who did not hand in their assignment at all. 

Ten, next you need to change the points by clicking into the text and then type in the appropriate value. As discussed at the start of this video, NCG columns should be scored at 0 points and MAS columns should be scored at 1 point.

It will then end up looking something like this:

Eleven, lastly, when you are finished and ready to go, click the Save rubric and make it ready button at the bottom of the page (the left button)

There you go, now this rubric is associated with that assignment and can be used to evaluate the student accordingly.

If you are not finished but are taking a break and will revisit it, instead click the Save as draft button (the middle button).

There you go, now this rubric is associated with that assignment and can be used to evaluate the student accordingly.

4) Back-end Rubric Set Up

There are some back-end components that a member of the T&L Commons Analyst Teams will be happy to take care of. Once you set up all your rubrics, please submit a service ticket requesting for support to set up “MAS/NCG Backend Rubric Set Up Support”

Creating a Custom Scale

As NCG/MAS is GPA-neutral, but gradebook requires a value for the scale, the work-around is to create a custom scale with NCG-based scales valued at 0 points and MAS-based scales valued at 1 point. 

Here are the steps to Creating a Custom Scale in Moodle Courses Gradebook:

One, from the course main page, click Grades (fourth menu option from the left) from along the top menu row.

Two, in the new window that appears, under the Grader Report dropdown menu, click on the Scales tab (under the “More” section).

Three, next to Scales, click the Add a new scale button.

Four, on this page you will actually create your custom scale. First, you need to name it. Type the name in the available field. Do not click the “Standard scale” box.

Five, here you will write out what your scale will be. Scales start from 1 and each level is separated by a comma. For example, NCG and MAS would be a scale between 1 and 2 points.

So it might end up looking something like this:

Six, you can add a description of your scale if you’d like, but this is not mandatory. Once you have finished, click Save changes at the bottom of the screen. 

Setting Your Letter Grades

The next important step is to make sure that your Gradebook is properly displaying the grades in Mastery format.

One, from the course main page, click Grades (fourth menu option from the left) from along the top menu row.

Two, in the new window that appears, under the Grader Report dropdown menu, click on the Grade letters tab (under the “More” section).

Three, from the Grade letters page, click Edit.

Four, in the Grade letters editor window that opens, change the letters from the left column to indicate NCG and MAS. Remember, NCG should be 0% (that “0 points” value in the scale) and MAS should be 100% (that “1 point” value in the scale). This means that anything scored at less than 100% will automatically be considered as NCG.

*Once you are done, make sure to click the Save changes button at the bottom.

Adjusting Your Display Settings

Once the above step, Create a Custom Scale, has been completed, the next thing to do is set up the final display of the grades.

One, from the course main page, click Grades (fourth menu option from the left) from along the top menu row.

Two, in the new window that appears, under the Grader Report dropdown menu, click on the Course grade settings tab (under the “Setup” section).

Three, under the Grade item settings section, select Letter for the Grade display type, and “Default (2)” should already be selected for Overall decimal places.

Four, under the User report section, you can see what information the students will see. Adjust all sections so that they indicate Hide, with the exception of Show feedback and Show letter grades (which may already be set as “Default (Show),” but if not, make sure it does).

Five, at the bottom of the User report section, you can also choose to adjust if you want to display the course total or not. This is done through the Hide totals if they contain hidden items option.

Six, when you are finished, scroll to the bottom and select Save changes.

Setting Course Total for Mastery Scale

The final step in the back-end settings is ensuring that the course total in gradebook is set for mastery scale.

One, from the course main page, click Grades (fourth menu option from the left) from along the top menu row.

Two, in the new window that appears, under the Grader Report dropdown menu, click on the Gradebook setup tab (under the “Setup” section).

Three, for the assignment that you want to apply the scale to, click the Edit dropdown menu, and select Edit settings.

Four, change the Grade type to Scale, and then for the Scale, select the specific type you wish to use – whether that be that Custom Mastery Scale, or your own custom scale.

Five, scroll to the bottom and click the Save changes button.

There you have it – how to set up NCG/MAS Mastery-based Scale in Moodle Gradebook.                    

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