Hidden Totals?

With Moodle 3, there is a new "default" in the way hidden grades affect the Totals columns in student views of the Gradebook.

If students are not seeing totals, you probably have a hidden grade & can change these 2 settings:

1. Go to Grades - -> Setup ---> Course Grade Settings

2. Under Overview Report, Change: Hide totals if they contain hidden items dropdown to one of the options to Show:

                 a. Show Totals Excluding Hidden Items

                 b. Show Totals Including Hidden Items

*either selection will show the Total Grade to students.

3.  There is a 2nd setting further down the page, for the User Report:

  Same options, and same settings to change...this one is specific to the User Report, so also needs to be set!

Backup Your Gradebook

It is good practice to Backup your Moodle Gradebook whenever:
   a. you've invested alot of time entering grades, and don't want to re-invest!
   b. you're about to make some changes to Categories, or Weighting

It's quick, easy, and relatively pain-free:

In Moodle -> Grades:

Choose -> Export

Choose -> Excel spreadsheet  (you can choose other options, but this is the most common format)

Click -> Download

This will download your current gradebook to your computer's download folder.  Typically you don't need to do anything more with it, but you can move the file someplace (like your documents) and have it avaiable just in case something unscrupulous happens to your GradeBook!

Moodle – Groups Button

Groups in Moodle are useful because they can be used to filter activities from certain groups within your class.  Groups can be troublesome because they can be used to filter activities from certain groups within your class - when you don't wish to!!!
More about Groups.

In Moodle 3 they have made it super easy to change the group settings for any activity!  With Editing Turned On, you may have noticed these small icons
   = Visible groups
= Separate groups
= No Groups: this is the most common setting, and allows ALL students to see/access/post in an activity

With Editing On, you can 1-Click change these settings.   I have discovered several situations where this was done inadvertently!
If students are having issues accessing and/or posting to certain activities, please check this icon.

Groups & "No Groups"???

Using Groups in Moodle is a useful strategy for instructors:

Why use groups?

• You are a teacher in a course where you have several classes and you want to filter your activities and gradebook so you only see one class at a time.
• You are a teacher sharing a course with other teachers and you want to filter your activities and gradebook so you don’t see the students from your colleagues’ classes.
• You want to allocate a particular activity, resource or topic section to just one class or set of users and you don’t want others to see it.
• This screencast about using groups also highlights the benefits of using groups.

Why can groups be a bad thing?
Well, they really aren't, however you do need to pay attention to what it means to be in a group.  You don't want to be "filtered out" of any activity, if you really need it!
The Setting: No Groups is often overlooked when giving students access to things like posting to a forum.  No Groups means ALL students can see/post/reply, and if a student can't do these things, take a look at this setting:

*This can be done at the "Course" level (Gear - Edit Settings), or for individual Forums/Activities (Gear - Turn Editing On - Edit Settings for each activity)

You can "force" this setting so any Forum or Activity automatically changes to "NO Groups".  To do this:  From the Gear - edit settings:

 Change Group Mode to "No Groups" and Force group mode: Yes, means All students will be able to see, post, etc.  This is the most common setting, unless you actually choose to use groups and filters.  By Forcing this change, it will apply to any current forums/activities already in place.