Calculation Methods for Assessing Individual Discussion Posts

You can evaluate the individual posts of a student and have D2L calculate the topic score for each student, or you can directly assign the student a single score for each topic. If you choose to assess individual posts, you can specify how the system calculates each overall topic score in the Posts section of the Assessment tab when editing a discussion topic.

To Evaluate Individual Posts

1. Check the box next to Allow assessment of individual posts
2. If you want to Include unassessed posts in the calculated topic score as zero, check the box next to that option (if you do not check this option, any unassessed posts will not be calculated into the final grade)

Calculation Methods

There are five possible calculation methods that you can select when configuring a topic for assessment.

• Average post score: This calculation method averages all of the post scores included per student.
   
• Maximum post score: This calculation method identifies the highest score of all the post scores included per student.
   
• Minimum post score: This calculation method identifies the lowest score of all the post scores included per student.
   
• Mode post score - Highest on multiple: This calculation method looks at the frequency of scores on posts, then selects the highest occurrence of a score per student. Once it picks the frequency, the system looks to see if multiple scores occur at that frequency. If not, it assigns that score to the student. If there are multiple scores with the same frequency, it will choose the highest of those scores. For example, if a score of 7 occurs 2 times, a score of 8 occurs 3 times, and a score of 9 occurs 3 times, the system will choose the frequency 3 and the score of 9.
  
  
• Mode post score - Lowest on multiple: This calculation method looks at the frequency of scores on posts, then selects the highest occurrence of a score per student. Once it picks the frequency, the system looks to see if multiple scores occur at that frequency. If not, it assigns that score to the student. If there are multiple scores with the same frequency, it will choose the lowest of those scores. For example, if a score of 7 occurs 2 times, a score of 8 occurs 3 times, and a score of 9 occurs 3 times, the system will choose the frequency 3 and the score of 8.
  
  
• Sum of post scores - This includes the total of all scores.