Grading scales
More Operations → Grading Bands is where you decide what a percentage means in your organisation.
Administrators and managers can both open it. A manager runs the courses these scales grade, so they need to be able to read and set them.
How a mark is assembled
Three steps, and the scale is the third.
1. Categories and weights. A course's work is grouped into categories, each worth a share of 100. The default is Assignments 45, Quizzes 30, Attendance 25. Each category scores as a percentage of what was available in it, multiplied by its weight. Set per course, on the course's Grading tab.
2. Bonus. Instructors can award bonus points with a reason. Bonus is added on top of the 100 the categories share out, and a course can cap how much is available.
3. The scale. The resulting percentage is mapped through a grade scale to a band — a label, and where the scale uses them, grade points.
The engine always produces a canonical 0–100. The scale is the only place that turns it into the language your organisation speaks, which is why a university using GPA, a TVET college using competency levels and a bootcamp using pass/fail differ in exactly one setting.
What you start with
Every organisation is created with four scales ready to use. You do not have to invent one before anybody's mark means anything.
Standard Letter (A–F) — the default default.
| Band | From | Grade points |
|---|---|---|
| A | 80 | 4.0 |
| B | 70 | 3.0 |
| C | 60 | 2.0 |
| D | 50 | 1.0 |
| F | 0 | 0.0 |
Letter with plus and minus — A, B+, B, C+, C, F, from 85 / 75 / 68 / 60 / 50 / 0.
Pass / Fail — Pass from 60, Fail from 0.
Distinction Bands — Distinction from 85, Merit from 70, Competent from 55, Not Yet from 0.
These are the same four offered as templates when you build a new scale, so "Standard Letter" means the same thing whether it was shipped to you or started from a template.
Anatomy of a scale
| Property | What it is |
|---|---|
| Name | Unique within your organisation |
| Kind | GPA, percentage, pass/fail or competency |
| Pass mark | Where competence starts, as a percentage |
| Allow overflow | Whether a total may exceed 100 |
| Default | The one courses use when they name none |
A band is a label with a floor, a ceiling, grade points, and whether it passes.
Allow overflow
Off by default. With it off, a total is capped at 100 however much bonus was awarded. With it on, bonus can carry somebody past 100 — and the product stops showing a denominator when it happens, because "108 / 100 (108%)" states a ceiling that is not the ceiling.
Turn it on only if your organisation genuinely awards above full marks.
The default scale
One per organisation. A course that names no scale of its own uses it.
Choose your default before the first course is graded. A course with no scale and no organisation default produces a percentage with no grade beside it, and nothing on screen says why.
Building a scale
Start from a template or from scratch, then edit the bands. The rules the platform enforces:
- Every band needs a distinct floor. Two bands starting at 70 is ambiguous.
- The lowest band starts at 0. Otherwise a low mark falls into no band at all.
- Every band needs a value. In a GPA scale, grade points.
- Credit never rises as the score falls. A band below another cannot be worth more.
These are refused at save rather than accepted and discovered later.
Which scale a course uses
Set on the course's Grading tab. Leave it unset to use the organisation default, which is the right choice for most courses — it means changing your default later moves everything that did not opt out.
Changing a scale that is in use
Grades already awarded do not change. When a mark is worked out, the band label and its grade points are copied onto the record and frozen there. Redrawing your boundaries in March does not silently regrade February.
That is a feature, not a limitation. A learner's transcript should say what they were told they got.
The consequence is that a scale change applies from the next time each mark is recomputed. If you need a whole cohort re-expressed under new bands, that is a deliberate regrade, not a side effect of editing a scale.
Archiving a scale takes it out of the list of things a new course can pick without disturbing the courses already using it.
Setting a course's categories
The weights live on the course, not here. Manage Courses → the course → Grading:
- one row per category, with a weight
- non-bonus weights must total 100
- an optional bonus ceiling
The scheme is snapshotted onto each offering when the offering is created. Editing the course afterwards does not rewrite a cohort already half way through, which is what you want — and it means a mid-run change has to be made on the offering if you really want it to apply.