Using Grades in SharePoint Learning Kit

Using Grades in SharePoint Learning Kit

The SharePoint Learning Kit (SLK) has had support for marking with grades since version 1.6, but I’ve never got round to documenting it. It’s an optional feature and by default is turned off so you won’t have seen it unless someone has turned it on for you. It’s a nice simple implementation. When turned on, just adds a text field to the grading page which allows you to enter any text you want for the grade. There’s a maximum length of 20 characters which should be more that enough for a grade. Turning on To turn on you need to update the SlkSettings.xml file in central administration. All you need to do is add the attribute UseGrades=”true” to the root Settings element. 

Use Once UseGrades is turned on then instructors will see an extra grades column on the grading page. This is a free text field of length 20 so they can put in whatever they want up to 20 characters. 

Once the assignment is returned to the learner then they will see the grade value on the lobby page for the assignment. 

And that’s basically it, nice and simple, but allows you to add a grade without having to add it in the comments. Removing the Points Column On a related note you can also configure SLK to not show the points column for assignments. Typically this would be used in conjunction with grades, but can be used on it’s own if you only want to use comments. To do this set HidePointsForNonELearning=”true” on the Settings element in SlkSettings.xml similarly to UseGrades above. Once this is done then the Points column will be hidden on the grading page for instructors and the Points row will be hidden for learners on the lobby page. SalamanderSoft’s GradeBook Our GradeBook web part also supports grades when they are turned on in SLK.