When setting up your Grade book, there are different Grade Type Descriptions. These directly correspond to the exams that are created: Quiz, Test, Module Exam, or Final Exam. These Test Types will have a default name, listed under Test Type - Grade Type Descriptions: Quiz, Test, Module Exam, and Final Exam. There is also an Offline Grade Type Description, which allows instructors to add assignments that were not performed in Testing.
Whenever you create a new test as an instructor in EMSTesting, you have the ability to decide if that test should be categorized in the grade book as either a Quiz, Test, Module Exam, or Final Exam. This is how the program determines the passing percentage on the test and its weight when calculating the student's overall grade.
- Test Pass %: This is the score students must meet to count as “passing.”
- % of Grade: This is the weight of that grade type as a percentage of their overall class grade.
On the Grade Book tab of a class, you can change the names of the categories from Quiz, Test, Module Exam, Final Exam, and Other to something else. However, changing the name of a category on the Grade Book tab does not change the names of the categories available when creating and categorizing a test. When creating a new test, these categories will still appear as Quiz, Test, Module Exam, or Final Exam.
- Example: You might change to "Quiz" to “Daily Quizzes”). But when creating a "daily quiz," it will be selected as a quiz in the test creation dropdown.
The Grade Type Descriptions remain in the same order: 1. quiz, 2. test, 3. module exam, and 4. final exam. It is not possible to reorder the grade types by changing the custom name to a different description.
- Example: If you change the name of the Quiz to “Midterm Exam,” then when creating the "midterm exam," you would need to select the test type of "quiz." This would require all instructors added to the class, when creating exams, to know and remember that when creating the Midterm Exam itself, you will need to categorize it as a Quiz if you want it to be graded as you’ve set it up in the Grade Book tab.
The Other category under Offline Grade Type Description works differently. This is for grades added to the gradebook manually. When creating tests, there is no option of "other" that can be selected.
- Example: Adding the options of "Attendance" and "Homework". Allowing students to receive credit for these assignments.