There’s a good chance you’ll want to grade learners taking your course.
CLANED® offers a variety of ways to do so, and determine what materials affect their grade. Why use grading, you may ask? With it, you can:
Report quantifiable course outcomes
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There is a high likelihood that someone will be asking you to report some metrics about the success of your course. Grading tells you how many people passed your score and where they may have failed
Set a standard for learners
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Learners feel confident because they have passed a certain threshold
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Standards make course completion requirements clearer for learners. Not having one can lead to guessing
Provide certificates
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Certificates are a great way to promote your course and is a tangible outcome that learners really enjoy. Without grading, you cannot give certificates
Watch the video below or read on to find out how to enable grading for your board.
1. In the "Edit board" menu, make sure that "Enable progress tracking on this board" is on
2. Click on the "Track" tab
3. Click the icon with the three dots on the right hand side of the "Track" tab, and click on "Grading settings" in the pop-up
4. Grading settings page
This is the grading settings page. Here we'll configure a specific grading setup which determines what is required from learners to pass the course or to achieve a certain grade. Grading is determined by two variables,
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The "Grading scheme" section,
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The "Grade consists of" section, aka. grading criteria
5. Grading schemes
The grading scheme defines what type of grade the learners will receive. Independent of the scheme, learners are required to complete all mandatory activities.
5.1. Grading schemes
There are 3 options for grading schemes:
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Pass/Fail
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Scale
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Percentage
Read more about grading schemes in our detailed guide. Once you learn how each one works, you can choose the right fit for your course.
5.2. Grading scheme: Pass/fail
In pass/fail grading scheme learners can either pass or fail a course. They pass as soon as they meet a set thre hold of required points necessary to pass. If you’re using this scheme, it is recommended that you set a relativity high threshold to ensure learners complete a large majority of the content/assessments necessary.
5.3. Grading Scheme: Scale
A scale-based grading scheme allows you to incorporate several levels of accomplishment such as 1-5 or A-F. For each grade (accomplishment level) you need to specify what criteria (scores) correlate to each level of the scale.
5.4. Grading Scheme: Percentage
A percentage-based grading scheme gives learners score as a percent (%).
So, if they get 87% of all available points, their grade will be 87%. You can set a minimum percentage needed to be considered a pass on the course but unlike a pass/fail scheme, learners' scores will be specific.
E.g., in a pass/fail scheme with a pass criteria set at 75%, a learner who scores 75% and a learner who scores 90% will both appear as pass. In a percentage scheme the learner at 75% will have a score of 75% and a learner at 90% will have 90%.
Important! This feature ensures that once a learner achieves a passing grade in a course, subsequent changes to content, scoring, or grading criteria will not affect their earned grade.
This "lock" is particularly useful when you need to tweak your course without invalidating any passing grades. For instance, if you increase the number of required comments to pass from 4 to 5 without this feature enabled, then learners who previously passed with 4 comments would suddenly fail. With the lock, passing grades remain unaffected by such adjustments.
6. Grading Criteria
The “Grading consists of” section is where you select the various elements and contents you want to affect the grade and by how much. There are three automatically tracked and calculated options available:
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Assessments
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Comments
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Progress Rewards
There is also an additional category “Other items”, which may relate to assignments/projects, attendance in virtual or f2f meetings, etc. Items included here cannot be automatically graded or calculated and require manual input by an instructor or course admin.
Please note that the total percentage of the grade that any chosen grading option or combination of options count towards must equal 100%.
6.1. Grading Criteria: Select assessments
Once you’ve decided on how grades will be determined, it’s time to get more specific and select which assessments will contribute to the grade. The first option under the “Grade consists of” header is Assessments.
Click "Select assessments" to choose which assessments will affect the grade. You can also set assessments to mandatory, meaning they must be completed in order to pass the course, regardless of a learner's score or if the assessment is graded for points.
There is also an option here to add “weights” to the assessments, meaning you can adjust the percentage of assessments relative to their overall "impact" on scores. For instance, you can give a lower weight to small quizzes and higher weight to final exams, for instance.
6.2. Grading Criteria: Comments and Progress Rewards
In modern learning and education, it’s generally practiced and accepted that grades should consist of more than just test results. Things like level of involvement and engagement with materials is considered an important aspect.
Assigning a percentage of learners’ grade to their progress and engagement can be done through the Comments and Progress Rewards options in the grading criteria.
6.3. Grading Criteria: Other Items
In addition to assessments, comments, and progress rewards, you may want to include additional manually evaluated elements into your grading criteria.
Projects, essays, and case studies are common graded exercises in courses. To include learners' results in these types of activities, use the “add new item” button under the heading “Other items”.
Note that these exercises require individual, manual scoring, so marks cannot be automated by Claned. An instructor or course facilitator will still need to input learners’ marks into these fields. However, calculations of scored items towards the final course grade will still be done automatically.
In the example picture you can see the webinar participation is scored out of 20 with a minimum of 10 to receive a pass on this element. The project is worth 20% of the final grade.
