Total points column
The optional Total Points column calculates a student’s total points for the marking period, which is useful for total points grading, gamified courses, or non-traditional grading.
Enabling the total points column
You must be a course administrator to enable this feature.
Navigate to a course and select Grade Setup.
From Control Grading Columns in Gradebook, select Total points column.
Click Save Changes. The Total Points column is added to the gradebook and displayed with the Overall grade column.
The Total Points column is for grading based on points earned, unlike the Overall grade, which factors in categories, weights, and exceptions. Displaying both may confuse students and parents. If using total points for grading, from Visibility Settings, enable Hide overall grades in the student grade report for clarity.
Total points column calculation
The Total Points column displays the total points a student has earned across the entire marking period. The column header displays the total possible points for the course and cannot be customized per student.
This calculation ignores:
Grading categories and weights
Individually assigned items
Exceptions and excused assignments
Additionally, when course materials are individually assigned, the Total Points column still reflects the total points for all graded items, even for students who were not assigned certain materials.
To ensure the Total Points column is accurate, unpublish ungraded or unsubmitted assignments to prevent discrepancies between the points displayed and the actual total possible points.
If using extra credit, avoid adding it through a grade column that affects all students. Instead, add extra credit within an existing graded item or create a zero-point assignment in an existing grading category. Using the course override column may hide the extra credit if overall grades are hidden from students.
When excusing a course material for a student, the Total Points column does not update to reflect the new number of points possible. Therefore, a custom grade is not displayed in this column and will not reflect the same score shown in the Overall column. However, the student's percentage does update to reflect the excused assignment.