Grading in the TU Graz TeachCenter (Exam)
In the TeachCenter (TC), there is the possibility to submit and directly grade assignments and offer exams and self-assessment tests.
Grades in the TeachCenter are GDPR compliant because students, unlike teachers, can only see their own grades and not those of other students.
Grades can then be transferred from the TeachCenter to TUGRAZonline.
Grading an assignment
You can find out how to create an assignment/submission in the user guide "Exams with file upload".
In the settings of the assignment, in the section Feedback types, you can select how to give feedback:
- commenting directly in the submitted document
- providing general written feedback or
- uploading an assignment feedback file
In the section Grade, you can define how many points can be obtained.
When you click on the assignment activity in your TC course, you will see an overview of how many students have already submitted their assignments and how many still need to be graded.
Click on View all submissions to get to the overview.
In this overview, a textbox Submitted for grading indicates which students have already submitted a document to be graded.
To edit the document locally on your computer, download it by clicking on it.
To grade the submission directly in the TC, click on the button Grade.
A new interface will open where you can now grade the assignment.
Here you can:
- move to the next page, if the document is comprised of more than one page.
- select tools from the toolbar in order to insert comments in the document, add stamps or write comments with your tablet and stylus.
- enter the grade for the student’s submission. You defined the maximum points in the settings of the assignment.
- provide feedback by adding a comment as general feedback or uploading a feedback file. You can only do this if you selected these options in the settings of the assignment.
- save changes, reset or save and show the next submission.
Once you save the changes, the status in the overview changes to Submitted for grading - Marking completed. You will see the points entered and possibly the feedback comment or the feedback files. You may have to scroll to the right to see this.
Once the assessment has been saved and students open the assignment activity, they will see their scores, the file you annotated, the feedback files and the feedback comments.
Please note that that for the students to see their grades, the assignment must not be hidden. If you want all corrections to be visible to students at the same time, follow the steps in the "Hiding grades until a set date" section on this page or use the marking workflow.
The marking workflow is particularly useful when several people correct the submissions at the same time or you want to make all grades visible at the same time, as it divides your grading process into several stages.
This option can be activated in the settings of the assignment activity (open the activity > Settings tab > Grade > Use marking workflow > Yes.)
This will give you an additional drop-down menu in the submission overview (click on Grade) with various marking workflow states.
With the marking workflow, you also have the possibility to publish the results to students later, thus making them visible to everyone at the same time at the very end of the grading process: To do this, select all participants in the overview and set the marking workflow state to released.
Grading a quiz
You can find out about creating a quiz activity and adding questions in the user guide "The quiz activity in TU Graz TeachCenter".
When you add questions to a quiz, you can assign points to each question. Total of marks shows the total sum of all points of individual questions.You may independently define a Maximum grade, which may differ from this. The total of marks is scaled to correspond to the maximum grade (example: here, the two points of the questions will be scaled up to 10 points total).
In the activity settings of the quiz activity (Open the quiz > Settings tab > Grade), you can also define the Grade to pass, which is the minimum grade required to pass. The maximum achievable points correspond to the value entered for Maximum grade.
Some question types such as multiple choice, single choice, short answer are graded automatically. In this case, you do not need to grade anything manually and can directly see the results when students have completed the test.
Some question types (Multiple choice, Matching, Short answer) can be graded automatically. In this case, you can immediately view the results once students have completed the quiz. To do this, open the quiz and go to the Results tab.
Click on Review attempt under the name of the student to view the attempt and write comments or make corrections, if necessary.
Please note: Question types such as for example Essay questions require manual grading by the teacher.
Click on Make comment or override mark to write a comment or edit grades. Click on Save to save the changes. In this way, you can also overwrite automatically generated grades.
If you would like to grade all the student answers of one question at once, you can do this via manual grading. This is especially suitable for questions that are not automatically graded, such as essay questions. To do this, click on the Quiz activity > Go to the Results Tab > Choose Manual grading from the dropdown menu.
You will now see an overview of the questions that still need grading.
Click on grade all to see a list of all the answers to the respective question. Here, marks and comments can be added as usual. Remember to click on Save and go to next page at the end to save the grades.
If you want to revise automatically rated answers to a question collectively, click on Also show questions that have been graded automatically and on update grades or grade all.
Students can view their marks (or grades as numbers, if this has been activated in the settings of the assessment overview) via the Grades tab in the main menu at the top of the TeachCenter course.
The assessments comply with the GDPR because unlike teachers, students can only see their own results!
Students can also view their scores or other details such as their test attempt or feedback by reopening the exam activity later.
What is displayed in this view is defined by teachers in the test activity settings under Review options > After the quiz is closed.
By default, no boxes are checked. If students should be able to view their scores, teachers must tick teh respective items there.
Please note: Do not hide or delete the exam after grading; then the results and assessments are no longer visible for the students!
Settings in the grader report
By clicking on Grades in the Main Menu, teachers can open an overview page that displays all grades of all participants in the course in a grid for the entire course.
In an assignment, you can use the marking workflow (see above) to publish all results at the same time.
If you want to publish all grades of a test or assignment at the same time, you can also define in the grade overview (Main Menu > Grades) when the grades should become visible. To do this, go to Grades in the main menu at the top and activate the editing mode.
Scroll to the right until you find the activity whose results you want to hide and click the gear below the activity name.
Scroll down and click on Show more if not all options are shown. Select the checkbox Hidden. To automatically make the results visible after a certain date, click on Show more... and select the checkbox Enable next to Hidden until and enter the desired date.
Note: If you see the message "Visibility settings are set in the activity settings" instead of a checkbox, then you must first make the exam visible and allow students to see their points after the attempt (in the review options in the test settings).
By default, points are displayed in the grade overview. However, you can also display the students' grades in addition to the points.
Note: By default, a grading key with grades 1-5 and certain percentages is predefined.
To view or edit the grading key, called grade letters: Go to Grades in the main menu and select Grade letters from the dropdown. These settings apply to the entire TeachCenter course.
To display grades in addition to points in the grade overview, select the Course grade settings from the drop-down menu. In the section Grade item settings, select Letter, Letter (real) or Letter (percentage) as the Grade display type.
Note: This setting affects all graded activities in a course.
To display only the overall grade of a course as a grade instead of points, select Gradebook setup from the drop-down menu. Next to the course name, in the line with the folder icon, click Edit > Edit settings.
In the section Category total, you need to click on Show more ... to access additional options. Next to Grade display type, select Letter or Letter (real).
In the drop-down item Gradebook setup you can make further settings for ratings. Grades can be grouped in so-called grade categories.
By default, each TC course has one main grade category, represented by a folder icon, with the course name. However, you can create new grade categories such as for example "Oral assessment" and "Written assessment".
To add a new category, click Add category near the bottom of the page. Give the category a suitable name. You have here, once again, the option of setting whether marks of grades should be displayed.
Each grade category includes one or more activities, called Grade items. Grade items are activities such as an assignment or quiz.
Grade items are created automatically, as soon as you add a TC activity such as a quiz or a assignment. However, if you need another (manually created) Grade item (for example, an oral exam that has no equivalent TeachCenter activity), you can create one. To do so, click on on Add grade item near the bottom of the page. Add a meaningful item name and select the grade category to which the item should belong. Add the maximum points that can be achieved.
You can use the up-down arrow to move grade items to other grade categories.
Note: It is best to set up these categories and Grade items at the beginning of the semester, even before you have entered assessments! This helps to avoid possible problems due to recalculating points or shifting categories!
Downloading results
Via the grader report you can export the categories and respective points as Excel file, XML or text (depending on the default setting). Only the table is exported, no exam questions or answers!
In the main menu at the top select Grades > in the drop-down menu select Export, then the desired file format.
Within a quiz activity you can download the detailed results as a table (question texts, students' answers, correct answers, points). With this feature you can generate an overview of the detailed results of all students in an activity.
To download the results of a single quiz: Open the Quiz activity > go to the Results tab. Above the grid with the students and achieved points there is the option Download table data as. Select the desired format (.csv, .xlsx, HTML table, .json, .ods) and click on Download. In this way, you can export the detailed results of a test.
In addition, you can also download the quiz results in a table together with the question texts, the students' responses, or the right answers in the formats mentioned above. To do this, a new result report must first be generated. In the quiz activity > go to the Results tab > select Responses from the drop-down.
Under Display Options, tick the desired elements and click Show report. The selected elements will now appear in the table below, which you can download as usual.
Note: This export is suitable for saving answers, feedback and points for archiving, e.g. at the end of the semester or after the exam.
In contrast to the export within a quiz activity, you will receive a separate folder per person. The quiz is exported as a PDF so that it is easier to read. However, you do not have an overall spreadsheet with results of all students.
Download student activities (quizzes and assignments) as a ZIP folder via the Main menu > More > "Download student activities". This menu allows you to download the answers and results of several quizzes or submissions at once.
To create a new download, click on the button "Download student activities". Select whether the folder structure should first be sorted by student or by activity. Select which activities you want to export. Then confirm again by clicking Create Download.
Please note: The download is generated overnight and is available the next day. You will receive an e-mail notification.
Grades can be exported from the TeachCenter Exam (or also from the normal TeachCenter) to TUGRAZonline. This makes the transfer of grades to TUGRAZonline much easier.
In order to be able to use this import feature, please note the following:
- The corresponding exam date must have been added to TUGRAZonline beforehand.
Please note: The list of exams is synchronised approximately every hour. Therefore, if you have created an exam appointment in TUGRAZonline immediately before, an error message may appear in the TC that no open exams were found. Please be patient until the exam is synchronised in the TeachCenter.
- The exam date must contain examinees.
- You must be registered as an examiner for the exam in TUGRAZonline.
- The grading scale of your TeachCenter course or TeachCenter Exam course must match the grading scale in TUGRAZonline. If necessary, edit the scale under the menu item Grades > Grader report > Grade letters.
Export from TeachCenter (Exam) to TUGRAZonline
To transfer grades, open the corresponding course in the TeachCenter (Exam) and select the item Grades. Click the tab Grader report on the left, down the list click Export.
Now you will see several sections:
Grade items to be included: "Course total" is selected by default.
Export format options: Here you can select whether the feedback on the final course grade should be exported or not. If these settings change, a new publish link must be created.
Grade publishing options: This explains exactly how you can export exam results. At the bottom of the section you will see a table called "List of your exams for this course" with the associated exam.
- Click the „plus icon“ in the "Actions" column to create or recreate a publish link.
- Click the "copy icon" to copy the created publish link to the clipboard.
- Switch to the TUGRAZonline exam management, candidate list. Select the corresponding course.
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- Open the import mask via the menu item Import from TeachCenter and paste the publish link in the field "URL".
- Click Go to preview.
- Check the data.
Important: Students, who do not have a grade in the TC (e.g. because they did not appear for an examination) will not be graded.
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- Click Perform import.
Please note the expiration time of the publish links created.
Help & Contact
For questions on TeachCenter / TeachCenter Exam: tc@tugraz.at
For more information on grading and advanced options such as weighted grades, see the official Moodle documentation in the Grade category, the Grade FAQ, and the quick guide for grading.
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