The gradebook primarily shows the grade or score for each graded activity within the online course. This grade could be shown in a number of ways:
Numeric grade: A numerical grade between 1 and 100. This is already set up and ready to use within all Moodle courses.
Scale: A customized grading profile that can be letters, words, statements, or numbers (such as Pass, Merit, and Distinction).
Letter grade: A grading profile that can be linked to percentages (such as 100 percent = A).
Within some activities (such as the assignments), written feedback can be provided in addition to the grade and can be viewed in the user reports and by students.
With lots of activities that use grades within a course, the gradebook can be a lot of data on one page. Categories can be created to group activities and the gradebook view can be customized according to the user to see all or some categories on the screen.
Think about a course that has 15 units and each unit has three assessments within it. The gradebook will have 45 columns of grades — which is a lot of data! We can organize this information into categories to make it easier to use. We will be doing this in Chapter 6, Organizing Using Categories.