Assessing student progress

As students interact with your course materials, join in with discussions, and take various quizzes, they build up some marks in the gradebook that we will look at in detail in Chapter 9. Some of these marks will be automatically assigned, as with quizzes and peer assessed forums, but others will require a mark from staff and some feedback.

Depending on how the gradebook is set up, the students will be able to see their grades when they log in and staff or teachers enrolled on that course will be able to see all their students' grades.

Gradually, as you can see in the previous screenshot, you can build up a clear picture of how your students are doing and can spot problems to intervene as quickly as possible. You can also give detailed feedback on assignments and posts to forums in order to guide your students and create an effective framework for their learning in the subject. The gradebook itself, as we shall see in Chapter 9, can also be divided into categories of marks such as coursework or extra credit; so, it could be a useful guide for students' ability in all areas of their learning. It can be used to track homework assignments that might be a fast and effective way of gauging areas where students are having difficulties with your material. Information here would therefore allow you to modify your resources or discuss with the students other strategies that they could employ.