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Most of your assignments will be created as you build modules. Once you've considered the types of activities you want in your course (assignments, discussions, quizzes) and decided which ones will be graded, it's time to group your assignments. However, it is a good idea to check your Assignments tab periodically to make sure the assignments are grouped by categories.

If you click on the Assignments tab in your course navigation, you will see all graded and ungraded assignments, graded discussions and graded quizzes. It's through this interface where you can categorize or group your assignments.

Points vs. Weighting Graded Groups

Before you go much further in setting up your Assignment Groups, one of the main considerations you need to address is how your grading system will determine how the graded items in your course contribute to students’ final grades. There are two options:

- - Points: Graded items can be worth a certain amount of points that are totaled for a final grade.

If you are in doubt of how to set up your grading system, we recommend this method. Use the points system when you want the points assigned to a grade item to be equal to its contribution to the final grade. Final grades are calculated by adding a student's score on all grade items together and dividing by the sum of the total points all the graded items are worth.

Below is an example of assignment groups using points.

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- Weighted: Graded items are placed in Assignment Groups that count as a percentage of a final grade worth 100%

The weighted system calculates grade items as a percentage of a final grade worth 100%. The points you assign to individual graded items can be any value, but their contribution towards the category they belong to and the final grade is the percentage value (weight) assigned to them.

Below is an example of assignment groups where categories are weighted. Note the % of Total on the right of each assignment group. As you can see some assignment groups make no contribution to the final grade.

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CAUTION: If you need to set up different weighting systems for different marking periods, please schedule a meeting with your ITC.

Benefits of Grouping

Teachers can group assignments in multiple ways. We like to think of the groups as categories - like homework, classwork, projects, tests, labs, etc. Choose a groups / categories that makes sense to you.

Besides providing a way to organize your assignments, grouping offers three (3) distinct advantages:

- - You can weight grades based on groups (i.e., tests are worth 50% of your total grade, etc.)
  - You can create grading criteria within a group (i.e. drop lowest 2 scores from the "Weekly Quizzes" group, etc.)
  - You can look at a student's challenges within groups to look for patterns to aid in remediation

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