In a classroom setting, students are often expected to participate in class discussions and that participation is part of the equation when assessing performance. Within a classroom, participation performance can be ambiguous. It is sometimes difficult to differentiate the student who is active but does not advance the discussion from the student that speaks less frequently but with greater impact.
Student interactions with the Discussion Board are a permanent record of participation. The Instructor has the option to grade Students at the forum level or at the thread level. In this way the Instructor can accurately compare Student participation to the expectations set forth.
Grading options are enabled when the forum is created or by modifying the forum. Click Modify on the Discussion Board for a forum to change its settings.
The Grade settings appear at the bottom of the Add Forum Page and the Modify Forum page. Select Grade Forum and enter a point value to evaluate participants on performance throughout the forum. Select Grade Threads to evaluate participants on performance in each thread. When the Grade Threads option is used, a Points Possible option appears each time a thread is started. Keep in mind that users cannot create new threads if Grade Threads is selected for the forum.
Follow these steps to evaluate performance in a forum.
Open the Discussion Board. A list of forums will appear. For each forum that may be graded, an icon will appear in the Grade column.
Click the icon in the Grade column. Only users with a forum role of Grader or Manager may enter a grade for a forum. A Grader may not view their own work.
A list of users will appear. Click Grade for a user.
A collection of the user’s posts in the forum will appear. Evaluate the posts and assign a Grade.
Click Submit to add the grade to the Gradebook.
Follow these steps to evaluate performance within a thread.
Open a Discussion Board and then open a forum and select a thread.
Click Grade Thread. This button will only appear to users with a forum role of Grader or Manager.
A list of users will appear. Click Grade for a user.
A collection of the user’s posts in the Thread will appear. Evaluate the posts and assign a Grade. Click Submit to add the grade to the Gradebook.
Use the Modify Forum feature to change the grading option to select No Grading. If Grades have already been entered for the forum or its threads, a warning message will appear that changing the setting will remove the associated Gradebook Items. Click OK to continue or click Cancel to preserve the Gradebook Items.