For an organized gradebook, start by creating Grade Categories, categories within which you can group similar grade items. For example, create categories in the gradebook for exams, assignments, quizzes, etc., so that the same type of grade items are clearly grouped together. Grade items within the same category do not have to have the same weight (for example, the Quizzes category can count 10% towards the final course grade, but consist of two different quizzes of which quiz 1 contributes 60% to the final quiz grade and quiz 2 contributes 40%).

1. Give the category a name (e.g. Assignments).
2. Give the category a shortened name (e.g. Assign). You will see the short name when entering grades under  Enter Grades. Using shortened names saves space.
3. If necessary, click on Show Description to expand the HTML editor and add a short category description, for example to briefly explain what falls under this category.
   • Check Allow users to view description if you want students to see the description.
4. Then determine under Distribution how the items in the category are weighted:
   • • Leave Manually assign weight to items in the category checked if you want to choose the weight of each grade item within a category yourself. Choose this option if the grade items within the category have varying weight (for example: the first assignment weighs 20%, the second assignment 20% and the third 50%). NB: if you choose manual, you will have to reset the distribution for each of the items when adding new grade items within this category.  
   • Check Distribute weights by points across all items in the category to assign each item a weight proportional to the number of points the assignment is worth. Weights are automatically recalculated when you add new grade items to the category. NB: you cannot manually determine the weight of the grade items (for example: if students can get x points out of 10 points for assignment one and two and x points out of 20 points for assignment three, then assignment one and two are automatically assigned a weight of 25% and assignment three a weight of 50%).
   • Check Distribute weight evenly across all items if you want all items within the category to carry an equal amount of weight. Weights are automatically recalculated when you add new grade items to the category to ensure equal weight distribution (for example: assignment one and two both count for 50%, but when you add a third assignment they all receive a weight of 33%). Within this option you can choose not to include a student's highest or lowest scores when calculating the final grade for this category. In that case, enter the number of lowest or highest scores that you want to exclude.

Under Display Options you can set what you do/don't want to show to students:

• Check Display class average to users to give students insight into the average of the group.
• Check Display grade distribution to users to show students a visual representation (graph) of how grades are distributed across the group.
• Check Override display options if you want the display options for this category to differ from what you set (during the grades setup wizard) for the entire grade book. You can override the display options by checking or unchecking under Show what you want to show or not show to students from this category (Points grade, Grade scheme symbol and Grade scheme color).
• Check your input and click:
  • Save and Close to save this category and return to the grade book.
  • Save and New to save this category and create a new category.
  • Save to save this category and continue working on it.
  • Cancel to cancel the changes

 You are now ready to attach grade items to the categories, which you can then attach to activities to assess course components.