In Moodle, you can use scales to rate or grade forums, assignments, quizzes, lessons, journals, and workshops. These scales can be used by anyone who is grading or evaluating a student's work. For example, if a workshop is being graded by other students, then the students use the scale selected by the teacher to grade that workshop. Being able to apply a scale to so many types of activities is a powerful way to make your courses more interactive and engaging.

Moodle comes with two pre-existing scales. One is called 'Separate and Connected Ways of Knowing'. This scale enables students to describe an item as connected to other knowledge in the course, or separate from the other knowledge. It isn't useful as a way to grade students, but instead is used to stimulate discussion about the item.

The other built-in scale that Moodle offers is numeric. You can assign a maximum number of points, from 1 to 100, to an item. Whoever is rating or grading...