Loyola Support Documentation

How do I grade discussion forums?

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Note: First create the Gradebook item in the Gradebook BEFORE associating a Forum or Topic with the item for grading. 

Go to Forums.

Select Discussions from the site Tool Menu. 

Select the Topic you want to grade.

Select on the More link for the Topic to grade, and then select Grade from the list of expanded options.

Note: Grade either at the Forum level or Topic level: The grading workflows are very similar. However, most faculty prefer to grade by Topic, since a Forum may contain several different Topics and each Topic may represent a separate Gradebook item or score.

Select a Gradebook item.

A list of site participants along with summary statistics for each user on number of posts authored, read, unread, and percent read in the current topic will be displayed. Sort the list by any of those columns by clicking on the column title.

Select Gradebook item.

Select the Gradebook item for which to record the scores for this topic from the dropdown menu in the upper right corner. Once a Gradebook item is selected, the screen will change to display a grade entry column to enter points.

Note: If you have already associated aTopic with a Gradebook item, then you do not need to complete this step. You should have been taken directly to the grade entry screen.

View posts.

To view posts, select the author name. A window will open showing the posts by that author. A Word Count for each post is also shown.

Select the Close Window button to close the window and return to the grade entry screen.

Enter points.

 Enter points into the grade entry column.

Add Comments.

If you would like to add comments, select the Show Comments link to expand the comment column.

Enter written comments into the text fields provided.

Apply a grade to all ungraded.

To apply a single score to all ungraded items, enter the score to be applied and then select the Apply Grade to all Ungraded button.

Tip: This is a useful option to apply zeros to all students that did not post, or to apply quick points for participation.

Submit grades.

After entering all of grades and/or comments, scroll down to the bottom of the list and select the Submit Grades button to save changes and send the grades to the Gradebook.

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