Using Natural Aggregation with Weighted Grades

It is important to note that Natural Aggregation can be used in three different ways. 

• Natural Weighting - Maximum points for each item are appropriately in relation to one another. For example - If you have two items in a category, one worth 10 points and another worth 30, item 1 is 25% (10/40) and item 2 is worth 75%(30/40).
• Adjusted weighting - Users often want to adjust categories and even items to have a weight other than the natural weight, essentially ignoring the points entirely. For example - Quizzes = 20%, Assignments = 10%, Attendance = 10%, Exams = 60%.
• Mean of grades - If I have a category made up of five quizzes all worth different points and I want a category percentage to tell the average (or mean) of all the quiz results' percentage correctly, I would choose this approach.

When setting your adjusted weights in your gradebook, make sure you check the box next to the weight that you are adjusting. It is recommended that you set the weights all at once and save changes. If your weights adjust from what you just set it is most likely caused by having Exclude empty grades checked. Having this checked causes empty categories to redistribute their percentages throughout the rest of your gradebook based on the Natural weighting method. 

If you create a new grade item in those categories, they will re-adjust to the correct weights that you set before. An example can be seen below. (NOTE: in the example, Exclude empty grades is checked)

The weightings for the three categories in my course have been set. 

As you begin to input grades, you can see how the weighting adjusts to how many items are in the gradebook.

*This is so that students will see a running % based grade during the term, rather than % of course total, or F. That being the case, students who don't do work and have no grade entered will have very inflated grade. If that is allowed to persist until end of term, they could suddenly go from A to C.

Note! Activities that are not assigned for the term, so no one did them, SHOULD be left blank. This automatically drops that activity from the course total. 

It is really important to enter a 0 for every graded activity that was assigned as soon as the due date is past.

Notice that when you add a second item, the weight is adjusted between the 2 categories in relation to what you set those categories to be.

Having grade items in all categories will adjust the weights in your gradebook to their correct amount.