Moodle

Unfortunately this can not be fixed - the calculation would be enormously more complex
As a workaround you can use grade exclusions

Grade exclusions? Where is it in Moodle 1.9?

I think more big problem is that student in gradebook view all grade items, but must view only grade items thats belong to his groiping.
Step to reproduce:
1. Enrol in course Student1 and Student2.
2. Create Group1 and add to this group Student1.
3. Create Group2 and add to this group Student2.
4. Create Grouping1 and add to this grouping Group1 and Group2.
5. Create Grouping2 and add to this grouping Group2.
6. Create Assignment1 for Grouping1.
7. Create Assignment2 for Grouping2.
8. Login with Student1.
Expected result: Student1 in course and gradebook see only Assignment1.
Real situation: Student1 in course see only Assignment1, but in Gradebook - Assignment1 and Assignment2. If user follow link Assignment2 in gradebook he see error "Sorry, you must be member of at least one group that is used in this activity."

Unfortunately gradebook must contain the same items for all studetns, the only solution could be to write custom user report - the problem is how to make the calculations work the way you want

"same items for all studetns" for calculations? or also for reports?

Problem with calculations - it is internal problem teachers and course. Not very good, but you can accept this and take into consideration.

Problem with reports (at the least standard User report) - it is problem of student courses view. Is it possible to solve at least this problem?

Sadly the lack of groupings in 1.9 Gradebook does mean that it is of no use to classroom teachers at secondary school level (equivalent to US K12 I believe) who teach multiple groups.

I have experience of teachers who have refused to use the new system as they do not have the time to pick through several hundred names to find their students to mark their work.

Are there plans to re-design gradebook 1.9 to simplify it and make it useable by teachers who are not technicians?

At least is there a clear and simple workaround to allow teachers to view their groups in gradebook 1.9?

Ah. My apologies!

I have obviously misunderstood the issue here. I have found that it is possible to group students within the gradebook...but you have to make sure the group setting is on at the front page.

It would be very helpful if the hide/show groups link on the gradebook had a help icon next to it explaining this...!

Please feel free to delete the comment above if it is in the wrong place.

Dan, thanks for your comments, and no apologies necessary. As you point out, it's rather unclear how to show groups in the gradebook. I've added a FAQ about it in http://docs.moodle.org/en/Grades_FAQ but we probably need to improve the usability of the gradebook interface too. Perhaps you could create a new tracker issue for it.

Regarding the gradebook not considering groupings functionality, this issue is now mentioned in the section "Assigning an activity to a grouping" in http://docs.moodle.org/en/Groupings

Hello. I am not a programmer but I would think there must be a way to write some code that could take care of this. So let's say you assign a graded forum to a grouping so only students in the forum can see their own forum on their course homepage. I would think then, by default the gradebook would automatically "exclude/hide" this graded assignment from all folks you are not apart of the forum's groupings. I have 5 forums assigned to 25 different students. Right now they only see their forum on the home page but all 5 in the gradebook. This also limits the functionality of the gradebook in that you can not use "sum of all grades" because it sees blank grades "--" as 0's and you can not choose to average grades with blanks =0 because it would give them 0 pts for all the non-assigned forums. Am I missing something?

Petr,
Would it be at all possible to use the groups_course_module_visible function somewhere in grade_get_course_grades? If groups_course_module_visible = false, you could set the grade item for that user as excluded and locked (and hidden?). Wouldn't this then prevent the student from seeing the item, prevent it from being calculated in their grade, and provide the instructor with a visual indicator that that student is not included in that activity?

Obviously I'm just taking a stab at this, but the logic to determine whether an activity is in a grouping is already built, it seems that it's just a matter of finding the best place to apply it and make sure that it exhibits the desired behavior.

Thanks,
Matt

I could be wrong about this (because I'm not a programmer), but I think there's a missing bit of info starting with

>Create a few groups and at least one grouping, then assign one of the groups to the grouping. Create a graded activity and assign it to the grouping.

As I understand groups, if you create groups, <em>everybody</em> has to be in a group.

Questions:
1. Does this same requirement extend to groupings?
1.a. If you create a grouping, every group has to be in a grouping?
2. Has anyone tested this?

I would think adding the ability to exclude grades would at least be a good first step. Any progress on that?

This is not going to be changed, because it the gradebook structure must be the same for everybody. sorry

Workarounds are:
1/ use group members only feature for resources only
2/ put all the activities from different groups into one category, set it to max grade aggregation and hide the individual activities
3/ create more courses

Petr, was your last comment about grader report or about whole gradebook reports?

What about changes for User report? I think this report must contain only those items, which are accessible by student.
Filtering the list of grade items in user report using getfastmodinfo is not very hard. Problem with aggregation can be solved through conditional aggregation in 2.0. If you or other core developer would want to take into consideration groupings...

well, if you just leave out those activities the calculations will not make sense.

Conditional aggregation could not be accurate either because the structure of gradebook must be the same for all students. Taking groupmembersonly into consideration could make the calculations extremely costly.

In 2.0 the aggregation of hidden grades and items should be much more flexible - the proposed solution 2/ above should be suitable in my opinion.

reopening, just removing inaccessible activity items and adding groupmembers icon would make it more user friendly,

please note that it will not solve the aggregation, teachers will have to group activities manually and set up proper aggregation (like MAX())

Petr, I left my suggestion for removing inaccessible items in MDL-18941 some time ago, maybe you could use the solution I gave there.

Just wanted to clarify. So from the posts it sounds like this has been tabled? Any plans to resolve this in the future. I think this should really get some priority because it really decreases the value of using groups and adds to a lot of frustration when folks begin using this great feature. Most folks just assume when you set up an assignment that is limited to just one groups view that it will not be viewed in the gradebook by non-group members and most are surprised when it does. I realize it might be a lot of work to resolve but I keep hearing about folks who start using groups who have spent countless hours trying to get the gradebook set up correctly only to realize their time was wasted and there is nothing they can do to make this work. But I do appreciate all the efforts made to resolve this. Wish I was a code monkey, I would love to help! Thanks for any updates you have. I am in a MCCC class right now and this issue is really causing some challenges in the class which is unfortunate because this would be the group of folks who could be real advocates of using groups.

Groups, groupings and groupmembersonly are different features. The groupmembersonly was designed as a simple hack that works around some problems. Unfortunately it can not be made fully compatible with current gradebook design because gradebook expects the course structure to be the same for all users - technically it would be very difficult and slow to do different type of calculations for each user, it would also add more complexity and might in fact be very confusing.

Ideally groupmembersonly should be used mostly for resources and activities without the grades. If you use it for activities with grades the problem is mostly visible on the User report, options are:
1/ show it as normal item (now)
2/ gray out the inaccessible items (groupmembersonly items) on user report, but kep it there - proposed solution for 1.9.x
3) remove the items - the problem is some calculations will not make much sense, my -1

In 2.0 we should finally solve the problems with aggregation of hidden grades and it might give us a few more options, I guess we could add some more configuration options or settings to satisfy different needs on of different users.

Please remember that groups are designed to separate students, but are not suitable for customising of courses for different target groups - in that case you should definitely use separate courses.

Petr

> Please remember that groups are designed to separate students, but are not suitable for customising of courses for different target groups - in that case you should definitely use separate courses.

Why we should definitely use separate courses? It is very uncomfortable. As far as I understand groupings+groupmembersonly developed for customising of courses for different target groups...

This would help our organization immensely as well. By creating 1 course, with multiple groups, and groupings; we can dramatically reduce our administrative overhead as we would not need to create multiple courses but rather group our users into one. Groupings feature is great but when the user goes to the gradebook, (as stated here), they are shown all activities that have a grade associated with it. We simply need it to show the activities assigned to that user's group. Would be a huge benefit and would actually reduce the need for a repository of files because they would all be contained in 1 course rather than sharing them among several courses.

Thanks, would be a huge help if this one was figured out.

-B

Well said Bernie. I totally agree. Until this issue is resolved it totally limits my use of groups/groupings. Separate courses are not an option. Groups/Groupings is such a great feature that I am sure someone put a ton of time in but the fact that it does not "play nice" with the gradebook really limits the use. Hopefully someone can assist with this. Wish I had the brains of a code monkey to help but did not get "gifted" with that. thanks to all for looking at this. I would really love to use this function and will wait patiently. Thanks!

Administrative overload and file duplication is the main reason for me to get my school (K-12) to use groupings too. Would it be an idea to have a setting that just switches of grade calculations and shows the raw marks and percentages for the individual grade items? With that setting the irrelevant grade items can simply be hidden without breaking any calculations as there ... well ... are no calculations. Students would nevertheless have a place where they can just get a nice list of their grades without having to click on the individual assignments.

I had assumed this would be a common thing to need to do. Our school has typically 5 classes (groups) in each year (course). Each will be being set different prep (assignments) by different teachers with different deadlines. We can't have a separate course for each class as this would at a stroke quintuple (at least) the disk space required and, more importantly, the time taken to update a common resource.
When I found out about groupings it seemed to be the solution. Certainly the displaying of prep works brilliantly. I don't care too much about what appears in the grader report (though some staff would). I don't mind too much about the missing scores as I use 'aggregate only non-empty grades'. What is crippling is that the student report sees all preps.

Is it possible to split this issue into:
1. fixing student report visibility of grades by grouping
2. fixing scoring etc
Would this speed up a solution to the first?

If we go live with this at school the parents and pupils will not understand. Most staff will not understand. It is actually an issue that could well prevent us using Moodle!

yes, it's really a pain not supporting groupings in grader report ...
but the bigger pain would be (as Alasdain stated above) that certain grouping activities would appear for some students in their user report, and that would confuse both the student and the parent.
we want a solution for grouping support in grader report and user report as soon as possible.

I see it says this was resolved in v1.9.8. Any chance it can get fixed for earlier versions. We are using v1.9.5 as it takes us a long time to test before we can upgrade as we have a lot of third party plugins. I really REALLY want to utilize groupings more.

Debra, sorry to disappoint, but this issue has not yet been fixed in 1.9.8. (The issue was resolved as 'won't fix', then reopened.) I've added Andrew (Moodle HQ developer) as a watcher for his consideration.

Thanks for the clarification Helen. I sure hope this can get resolved. In my opinion this is a bug. If an activity does not show in a groupings moodle pages it should not show up in the gradebook. easier said than done in my opinion. I talk to folks every month who have dedicated a ton of time to integrating groupings into their teaching only to be disappointed when they see what a disaster it makes of the gradebook and unfortunately that really turns them off to Group/Groupings. I did a presentation on Moodle at a conference a few weeks ago and a lot of folks were considering to move to Moodle and they were very interested in discussing the group/groupings feature and their hopes for it. I felt terrible having to share this problem with them ,but had to be honest. They were very disappointed and reconsidering their decision. Does anyone know if this is fixed for v2.0. I would like to give folks some hope. I realize if you do not actively work with Groupings and graded assignments it might be easy to dismiss this as a low priority but anyone in the Grouping zone knows what serious challenges this presents and not to mention the disappointment you get after putting so much time into setting up these activities. Okay. Off my soap box. Thanks for any help anyone can give in resolving this.

This seems to be a complex issue once you look at it. It can't be fixed in 1.9.x

I think we need more analysis and problem-solving here to have some hope of fixing it in 2.0.

Martin, even though it is indeed a complex issue, one can already achieve similar functionality for SWM and WM by hiding items from just some students and then excluding them from aggregation. The process is extremely manual though: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=143787#p628582

So, as a temp. workaround, bulk actions in the gradebook would help a lot.
Those bulk actions would be useful anyway, as Moodle lost the ability to bulk-exclude since 1.8 - MDL-13889

P.s. I remember that LSU gradebook had similar looking interface, when one could select just once item to work on, mark check-boxes near student names, and bulk-update their grades/settings.

May be we should add a ticket for development of bulk-update interface per grading item (and per student if possible)?

Great idea Elena and thanks for adding your comments Martin. Bulk exclude would be VERY VERY welcome. Having to do this one student/activity at a time is just not doable. That would be great for a temp fix.

Hello! I should put my money were my mouth is on this. If there is a way to get a permanent solution and if some funds would help expedite this (bulk exclude and/or longer term perm solution) I will find some money to contribute. I hate not being able to use groups/groupings and it is a bummer to see the enthusiasm decreasing in my faculty. We had such high hopes for groups/groupings and spent so much time setting them up and was so bummed when we realized the gradebook did not consider them

Two questions.1. Any work being done on helen's idea to add some bulk actions in gradebook? 2. Has issue been resolved in v2.0

I really wonder why this issue has been set to low priority !! we have spent a lot of time setting up groupings ...
about Elena's temp solution, it will not work !! why:
if we have 2 groupings (G1 and G2) each one has one group (g1 and g2) respectively, and 2 students (s1 and s2) assigned for each group respectively, when a teacher adds two assignments (for example, online text) named A1 (for grouping G1) and A2 (for grouping G2) and checked the "available for group members only" check box in each assignment settings page, then there will be no problem in course page for students to see their grouping's own assignment, student s1 will only see assignment A1 and student s2 will only see assignment A2, now the teacher decides to let each grouping students to see only their own assignment in their user report, so he opened the grader report, and edited the grade item (A1) to be hidden, and edited the grade for (A1) to be excluded, now when student s1 logs in, he will see only his own assignment (which is A1) both on course page and on his user report, and this absolutely 100% right! but the big problem, when student s2 logs in, he will see assignment A2 on course page (and this is right) , but on his user report he will be shocked when he see assignment (A1) [ which belongs to grouping (G1) ] exists on his user report [and of course his own assignment A2 is hidden], thus, the final grade s2 will get will be very confusing for him ...
SO THIS IS REALLY A BIG PROBLEM !! IT MUST BE SOLVED VERY SOON ...
we have tons of groupings on our moodle installation !! so please we need a real solution ..

NOTE: This issue was assigned to the STABLE backlog without complete triaging process. Marking it as triaged, but with this note for future reference.

This seems like a major oversight in the implementation of groupings. We have a number of staff using groups and groupings as a way to prevent duplication issues from creating a course per group. Having all assignments show to all students leads to confusion and a sense that student have work outstanding. Please increase the priority of this. We need it yesterday.

We're now at 2.1 and this is still not resolved. I agree with Murad.. this is a really big problem. We're getting feedback from users that they are confused by seeing assessments from all groups (which appears as duplicates).