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Assigning Discussion Forum Grades

You can assign discussion grades to evaluate participants on performance throughout a forum. When you create or edit a forum, you can enable forum grading options and a Grade Center column is created automatically.

Only users with a role of manager or grader can assign grades for posts. A grader cannot view his or her own work.

To assign discussion forum grades:

1. Access the discussion forum where you enabled forum grading and click Grade Forum on the action bar.
   
   
2. On the Grade Discussion Forum Users page, click Grade in a user's row with a number in the Posts column.
   
   
3. On the Grade Discussion Forum page, a collection of the user’s posts made to the graded forum appears. Because you can base a forum grade on multiple threads, all messages posted by the student are included for review. On the action bar, click Print Preview to open the page in a new window in printer-friendly format. Posts print in the order they appear on the page. To select which posts appear and in which order, you can filter and sort posts using the Filter function and the Sort by and Order drop-down lists.
   
   The side panel contains three sections:
   
   Forum Statistics: Includes information about the user's posts, such as Date of Last Post, Average Post Length, and Average Post Position.
   
   Forum Grade: Includes Grade, Feedback, and Grading Notes.
   
   Contributors: Users who have submitted one or more posts appear with exclamation marks—the Needs Grading icon. In this section, use the Previous User and Next User arrows in this section to navigate among users to grade
   
   -OR-
   
   Click a user's name in the list. Click Show All to view all users in your course. Users who have not posted to the graded forum are included in this list. Click Show with Posts Only to return to the list of users who have posts to grade.
   
   NOTE: The In Progress icon appears next to a user’s name until the specified number of posts is met for needs grading status. For example, if you choose three posts from the drop-down list and a user submits two, the In Progress icon appears.
   
   
4. In the content frame, evaluate the currently selected user's posts. To assign a grade, click Edit Grade in the Forum Grade section.
   
   NOTE: To collapse or expand a side panel section, click the arrow next to the section title.
   
   
5. Type a numeric value in the Current Grade Value box. Assigning a score here removes any Grade Center override that may exist for this user for this forum grade.
   
   NOTE: If you associated a rubric with the forum, you can access and use it for grading.
   
   
6. You can also type Feedback for the user and Grading Notes that appear to the forum manager or grader only. Click Text Editor to access the editor in a pop-up window. Use the functions to format the text and include files, images, external links, multimedia, and mashups to your feedback or notes.
   
   
7. Click Save Grade. The information appears in the Forum Grade section and in the Grade Center.
   
   
8. Click Edit Grade to make changes. The changes appear in the Forum Grade section and in the Grade Center column. The changes are recorded in the Grade Center on the user’s Grade Details page and on the Grade History tab.
   
   
9. When grading is complete, click OK to return to the Grade Discussion Forum Users page or use the breadcrumbs to return to the discussion board.