Tag Archives: grades

Test Grade Based on Question Category Performance [WatuPRO]

From version 5.5.8 the quiz/survey plugin WatuPRO supports yet another interesting option for grading the user’s performance: a grade based on the performance in each question category /  theme.

What Does It Mean?

This is different than showing grade/performance per category. It’s a method to grade the whole test (and typically determine whether it’s passed or failed) based on how the user did in the different topics in the test.

For example for a traffic law test you may have a “Passed” grade with the following requirements:

For category “General rules” require at least 90% correct answers.
For category “Street Signs” require between 80% and 100% correct answers.
For category “Priority” require between 70% and 100% correct answers.

On top of this you can also set a general requirement for the test, for example min. 85% correct answers on average for all categories.

The requirements can be based on points, percent correct answer, or percentage points achieved from the maximum points possible in the test.

How Does It Work?

  1. Go to the Grades or Manage Grades page for a selected quiz. Make sure “Manage grades / results for the [Whole test]” is selected and check the option “The final grade in this test will depend on the performance on different question categories” as shown below:
  2. The page will refresh and will show you the grade forms for adding or editing grades with new options – from/to fields for each question category (topic) that contains questions in the selected quiz:
  3. You can skip any of the categories by leaving both fields blank – this means there will be no specific requirement for that category. You can optionally set a requirement for the whole test (in the above example it’s min. 80% correct answers) or use only category based requirements.
  4. A setting in the Edit Quiz -> General settings tab defines what will be the type of criteria to check:
    a) By default all tests are graded based on number of points collected.
    b) If you check the above checkbox and save your quiz will be graded based on % correctly answered questions from total questions given to the test taker.
    c) If you check the above option but select “% from maximum points” from the drop-down menu, it will be graded based on the % achieved points from the maximum possible points in the quiz.This setting defines grading the quiz as a whole, grading based on category performance, and category grades if any.

This feature is also the best way of creating Myers-Briggs personality quizzes.

Receiving Grade “None” Or Unexpected Grade [WatuPRO]

This issue is most often caused by:

  • You have not defined grades at all. “Grades” is not the same as score, % correct answer or points. Grades are textual result that you assign to the respondent depending on their performance on the test. For example Passed or Failed; A, B, C, D, F; and so on. If you want to use grades you have to create them first.
  • You have selected “Calculate grades by % correct answers instead of points collected” to calculate grades but your grades are created with points in mind (or vice-versus).
    I.e. if the following is checked, your grades must cover the whole range from 0% correct answers to 100% correct answers:
    grades-by-percent This checkbox is on the General Settings tab in the Add / Edit quiz page. This is a very common mistake so please triple-check it before contacting support.
  • Your grades do not cover the whole range of points or percentages user can collect. If you are using points for grade calculation, make sure that all possible points are covered from the defined grades. If your best grade has 20 points for “to” and the user collects 21 points they will not be assigned any grade (and will receive None). If you are using % correct answers for grade calculation make sure your grades cover the whole range between 0 and 100. Please check the “Watch out the decimals” item below too.
  • Watch out the decimals. If you have one grade A: from 0 to 9 points and another grade B: from 10 to 20 points, and your quiz allows decimal points what happens with user who collected 9.5 points? They’ll get no grade. So the grades in this example should be A: from 1 to 10 points and B: from 10 to 20 points. If they get exactly 10 points they’ll be assigned the higher grade. Note that percentages are rounded to the whole number so if your quiz calculates grades by % and not by points you will not need to worry about this.
  • Using category grades without knowing how they work. Please check this guide.
  • The from – to values of grades should always be entered from the lower to the higher number. This means the lower number goes in the left box “from”, the higher number goes in the right box – “to”. Be careful if you define grades with negative points: -100 is lower than -1 for example. So -100 goes in the “from” box at left, -1 goes in “to” box at right.

Grade calculations are fully tested and work fine. If you are receiving “None” as grade this can be only because of misconfiguration. Use the variables %%POINTS%% and %%PERCENTAGE%% in the “Final Page / Quiz Result” tab to get better idea why none of the defined grades matches the points you collected (or the percentage correct answers).