The coursework breakdown
The breakdown is where a list of assessments becomes a course grade. You define categories, give each a weight, choose which kinds of coursework feed into it, and decide how scores combine inside it.
Open it from the group's Coursework tab with Grading Breakdown. When you are done, Save breakdown applies it to the whole group.
The starting point
A new group starts with six categories, which describe a fairly ordinary course:
| Category | Weight | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance | 10 | Attendance |
| Quizzes | 10 | Quizzes |
| Coursework | 20 | Assignments, worksheets, participation, other |
| Midterm | 20 | Midterms |
| Practical | 10 | Practicals |
| Final | 30 | Final exams |
Adjust them to your course rather than adjusting your course to them. Categories can be renamed, removed and added.
Weights must total exactly 100
This is enforced — the breakdown will not save otherwise, with Category weights must add up to exactly 100.
It is a deliberate constraint. Weights that sum to 97 or 105 still produce a number, and that number is quietly wrong for every student in the course. Refusing to save is the cheaper failure.
If your course has no practical, set that category to 0 or remove it, and give the weight to something else.
What feeds a category
Each category takes one or more assessment kinds, and optionally attendance.
This is why the kind you pick when creating an assessment matters. A midterm recorded as "other" lands in the Coursework category and is weighted at 20 alongside worksheets instead of standing alone.
Every category needs a name and at least one included kind or attendance.
How scores combine inside a category
The rule decides:
| Rule | Does |
|---|---|
| Weighted sum | Adds marks, so a bigger assessment counts for more |
| Average ratio | Averages each score as a proportion of its maximum, so every item counts equally |
| Best N | Keeps only the best N items |
| Drop lowest | Discards the weakest N items |
Best N and Drop lowest use the Rule Value — Best N = 2 keeps the best two. The other rules ignore it.
Which rule to choose
Average ratio for a category of comparable items of differing sizes — a 15-mark quiz and a 40-mark quiz each count once, which is usually what "quizzes are worth 10%" means. This is why quizzes default to this rule.
Weighted sum where size should count — a 100-mark final should outweigh a 10-mark exercise in the same category.
Drop lowest to build a forgiveness policy into the grade rather than handling it case by case at the end of term. One dropped quiz absorbs the week a student was ill without anyone having to ask.
Reading the figures
The breakdown reports, per category:
- Average ratio — how students are performing inside the category, before weight, usually as a percentage
- Average contribution — what the category is actually adding to the final score on average
The gap between them is informative. A category with a 45% average ratio and a 30 weight is dragging the course down by roughly 16 points; the same ratio at weight 5 is barely moving it. Read them together before concluding a cohort is struggling.
Including attendance
A category can draw on attendance instead of, or alongside, coursework kinds. That is how the attendance grade from your grading policy reaches the course grade.
Set it to 0 weight or remove the category if attendance is recorded but not graded in your course.