If you weight various items or categories by particular percentages of the overall course grade, use the Weighted mean of grades aggregation type. After selecting this type, a weight column will appear where users may assign percentages to items or categories, such as making Exam 1 worth 15% of students' overall grade.

Entering weights will be easier after all grade items have been set up for the course.

Step-by-step guide

  1. In the Course Menu along the top of your course, select the Grades link.

  2. Using the dropdown menu at the top left, select Gradebook setup.

    Use the grader report dropdown menu to select Gradebook setup


  3. Within Gradebook setup, click the Edit > Settings link next to the course category.


  4. Toggle or confirm that Aggregation is set to Weighted mean of grades.

    In aggregation item, select weighted mean of grades

  5. Click Save changes at the bottom of the screen and the fields for entering percentages will display in the Weight column for any grade items.

  6. Enter the weights for the categories or grade items as a whole number (e.g., 15 for 15%) , and click Save changes at the bottom of the screen.


Empty Grades simply indicates that a grade has not been entered in the gradebook. It may be empty because a student has not made a submission or that the teacher has not yet graded the item. Empty grades display as dashes in the Grader Report; they are different than scores of zero. Zeros are calculated, but dashes (empty grades) count towards the overall grade depending on what the teacher in the site has selected.

By clicking Exclude Empty Grades, the teacher is displaying a total that only reflects the graded items in the course, and the overall grade does not include ungraded items.

Exclude Empty Grades








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