How do I grade by forum or topic?

Site administrators can grade students by forum or topic using the Statistics & Grading page in Discussions.

You can also grade in the Discussions tool by student or while reading posts.

Important: In order to grade in Discussions, you must have added a gradebook item in the Gradebook for each forum or topic to grade.

Go to Discussions.

Select Discussions from the tool menu in your site.

Select Statistics & Grading.

On the Discussions main page, select the Statistics & Grading tab.

Select Statistics & Grading by Topic.

Select a forum or topic to grade.

Select either a forum title or a topic title to grade that forum or topic.  In the example pictured above, the topic Week 1 - Popular animated gifs is being selected to grade.

Note: The grading process is the same whether you grade at the forum or topic level. However, most faculty prefer to grade by topic, since a forum may contain several different topics and each student may post more than one message in the same topic.

Select a gradebook item if one is not already selected.

If you already selected a gradebook item when creating or editing the forum or topic you are grading, this item will appear by default in the Select a Gradebook item drop-down menu.

If you did not select a gradebook item when creating or editing the forum or topic, choose one from the drop-down menu.

View statistics for the forum or topic.

A table listing site participants will display, with the following summary statistics for each user in the current forum or topic:

  1. Participant's name,
  2. Number of new posts authored,
  3. Number of replies authored,
  4. Number of posts marked as read,
  5. Number of unread posts,
  6. The percentage of posts the person read.

You may sort the data in the table by selecting any of the column headings: NameAuthored - NewAuthored - RepliesAuthored - TotalReadUnread, or Percent Read.

Tip: For more information regarding the numbers of read and unread posts shown in these columns, see What makes a forum post count as read?

View posts.

  1. To view someone's posts in the forum or topic, select the author's name.
  2. A pop-up window will open showing the message(s) posted by that author. The Word Count in each post is also shown.
  3. Select the Close Window button at either the top or bottom of the pop-up window to return to the grade entry screen.

Enter points.

Screenshot demonstrating grade entry described below. Graphic link opens modal with larger image. Press Escape to exit modal.

Enter points into the boxes in the grade entry column.  The column heading includes the topic's Title, followed by the number of points possible in parentheses (e.g., Week 1 - Popular animated gifs (10.0 points possible)).

Note: Instructors and site administrators will be included in the participant list, but N/A will display in the grading column for them instead of a grade entry box.

Add Comments (Optional).

Screenshot with Comments fields shown on grading page. Graphic link opens modal with larger image. Press Escape to exit modal.
  1. To add comments, select Show Comments to expand the comment boxes.
  2. Enter your comments into the boxes provided.

Note: Grades and comments will be available to students in the Gradebook, not the Discussions tool.

Tip: If you have recently saved comments in Discussions, Tests & Quizzes, or Gradebook, type a few letters from one of your comments and an auto-fill option will appear to select and reuse it.

Apply Grade to all Ungraded.

Apply Grade to all Ungraded.

To apply a single score to all ungraded students:

  1. Enter the score to be applied in the text box above the table listing site participants.
  2. Select Apply Grade to all Ungraded.

Tip: This is a useful option to assign a grade of 0 to all students who did not post or the same grade to everyone who did.

Submit grades.

Submit grades.

After you have entered all of the grades and/or comments, be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the page and select Submit Grades to save your changes and send the grades to the gradebook.