Grade types: changing after you've started marking Turnitin assignments

An interesting little issue cropped up last week when using a PG Scale rubric in Turnitin.

The correct rubric had been attached to the assignment – using the 16 point scale – but some of the settings in Moodle hadn’t been adjusted fully before marking had started. This resulted in some strange looking results e.g. 275%

Normally we look at the Maximum Grade & Marks available in the assignment change to 16 and this will reflect the scale if the scale has been attached to the assignment using Grade Type.

But in this case the scale had been attached but the Maximum Grade had not been changed to 16 before the marking had started. So when I looked at the Grade Type it was locked as shown below:

Scale attached but Maximum grade not set correctly in assignment settings

Now this needed to be unlocked and the Maximum grade changed to 16.

As you may know Turnitin updates Moodle but Moodle doesn’t update Turnitin so I concentrated on what happens in Moodle knowing that the grading carried out in Turnitin would be unaffected.

So in the Grader Report I switched to the Single View for the assignment.

Switch to Single View of assignment

Switching to Single View allowed me to carry out a Bulk insert of grades: the most important thing here was to insert a Null value for All grades – a zero (0) is not same as a Null value so I deleted the 0 and left it blank

Bulk insert null value

Once the bulk insert was complete I was able to return to the assignment settings and adjust the maximum grade to 16 by first switching Grade Type to Point – setting Maximum Grade to 16 and then switching Grade Type to Scale and check that the Maximum marks in the assignment was also set to 16.

Grade type ready for use with PG Scale based rubric

When using the PG Scale I also switch the Grade Display to fraction or I and students would see a nonsensical percentage value.

$Student grades displayed as fraction and on PG Scale$

Student grades displayed as fraction and on PG Scale

So now when I look at the Turnitin submission inbox I see a students grades displayed both as a fraction of 16 and the corresponding PG Scale point

Assuming I have a rubric or form created with the PG Scale in mind when setting up a Turnitin assignment I follow a few simple steps to avoid this kind of issue:

In assignment settings switch Grade display to ‘Show grades as fraction’
In Grade
1. Change maximum grade value from 100 to 16
2. Then switch Type from Point to Scale
3. Select PG Scale
In Assignment Part 1
1. Set max Marks to 16
In Grademark Options
1. Select my pre-prepared rubric

And that should be ready to go.