Setting

Set up your assessment.

Good practice expectations at UCL include:

Familiarise yourself with how your instructions display to students so that you can anticipate questions and misunderstandings.

If students have queries, encourage them to post where fellow students can see your responses. A Moodle forum with student names hidden is one good place for this.

Let students know about the generic guidance we provide about submitting their work. Our student guidance includes Moodle Assignment, Turnitin Assignment and Moodle Quiz.

Students follow the instructions staff give them (Digital Recommend using our guides as far as possible).

Staff can grant extensions for individual students as required.

Where students have not submitted you can contact them (even where anonymous) via the activity's Participation Report, which gives the opportunity to filter and email students (except Moodle Workshop).

Good practice expectations at UCL:

Depending on the technology you are using, there is a range of ways to give feedback.

Marks and feedback are recorded in the Moodle Gradebook as they are entered or calculated. Assignments can be weighted in the Gradebook, which can calculate a final mark.

Transferring marks from the Moodle Gradebook into Portico can be a semi-automated process if you use Excel's VLOOKUP formula.

Before each new intake of students you will need to reset your Moodle space but you may not need to worry about keeping your own records of submissions since staff and students have access to each annual snapshot.

How do I get my marks from Moodle to Portico?

Step 1: Finalise your module's Gradebook

You can access the Gradebook under the Administration block in your course. Simply click Gradebook or Gradebook Setup.

Check to make sure your course total is calculated correctly, if you wish to use Moodle's calculation. If the course total looks wrong, check your weightings.

Step 2: Export your module's Gradebook

1. From the Gradebook page, click the Export tab and then the Excel Spreadsheet sub-tab
2. Select the specific grade items you wish to export. Possible grade items include Turnitin assignments, Moodle assignments, and the course total. At the end of the list of grade items there is an option to select all/none.
3. Click download to generate a spreadsheet of the Gradebook.

The main student identifier that Moodle uses is the Portico Student Number. Please note. To ensure the anonymity of student submissions, Moodle does not store the student's candidate number.

Step 3: Transfer marks from your Gradebook spreadsheet to a Portico spreadsheet

To quickly move marks from a Moodle Gradebook spreadsheet to a Portico spreadsheet, whilst minimising errors, you may find it useful to use Excel's VLOOKUP formula. This process is explained in the Portico team's importing by module support guide.

As of November 2020, the common identifier for students in a Moodle Gradebook spreadsheet and the Portico A26 spreadsheet is the student number.

Step 4: Upload Portico spreadsheet to Portico

Please see the Portico team's guides and training on importing marks into Portico.

Moodle Assignment - you release marks and feedback when you're ready.

Turnitin Assignment - you set a Post Date at the Setting stage; marks and feedback are automatically release then.

Quiz - you can either specify when the marks and feedback should be released, or release them when you're ready.

Moodle Workshop - you release peer marks and feedback to students when you're ready.

Moodle MyFeedback brings together each year's marks and feedback in one place. This allows students to look at their own progress and make reflective notes for themselves. It also allows personal tutors and certain staff roles to see an overview of students' progress and encourage them to engage with their feedback. Moodle MyFeedback indicates the most recent date students looked at their feedback, while Turnitin indicates the first date.

In Quiz, consult the Quiz Statistics Report for insights into the relative ease of questions and how discriminating each is.

Reflecting on the assessment process itself, staff may wish to consider whether the task was well conceived and whether instructions were optimal i.e. did they display where needed, and did the most important aspects stand out. Make refinements as needed.

Also see: 

• Monitoring students' achievement with Gradebook and MyFeedback
• Monitoring students' engagement with feedback via Moodle and Turnitin