Grading Quizzes
How quiz scores are worked out — instant auto-grading, partial credit, manual grading with feedback, and score overrides.
Quizzes are graded in two ways: automatically for objective questions, and by hand for written or creative answers. Most quizzes use a mix of both. This page explains how scoring works and how you grade the parts that need a human.
Auto-grading
Objective question types score themselves the instant a learner submits. This includes multiple choice, true/false, dropdown, matching, ordering, fill-in-the-blank, numeric, and more — see Question types.
The learner can get an instant partial score from these questions right away.
Partial credit
Some auto-graded questions can award part of the points instead of all-or-nothing:
- Multiple choice (multiple answers) — credit for each correct option chosen.
- Matching — each pair can be scored on its own.
- Fill-in-the-blank — each blank is checked separately, and you can make each blank case-sensitive or not.
- Numeric — you set an accepted tolerance, so an answer close enough to the target still counts as correct.
Scoring rules you control
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Points per question | How much each question is worth. |
| Negative marking | Optionally subtract points for a wrong answer. |
| Pass mark | The percentage a learner must reach to pass. |
A learner's score is the total points earned, and pass/fail comes from the pass mark.
Manual grading
Written and creative answers — short answer, essay, open ended, code, file upload, audio, video, draw/sketch, comprehension, and case study — need a person to grade them.
- Go to Admin → Quizzes, open the quiz, and find the attempts that need grading.
- Open an attempt. Questions waiting on you are marked pending.
- Read the learner's answer, then enter a score for that question.
- Add feedback so the learner understands the mark.
- Save. Once all pending questions are graded, the learner's final score updates.
A quiz with any manually graded questions shows the learner an instant partial score for the auto-graded part, then the final score after you finish grading.
Overriding a score
Sometimes an auto-graded answer needs a human decision — for example, a valid answer the system did not anticipate. You can override the score on any question and enter the mark you want, along with feedback explaining why.
What the learner sees
After grading is complete, the learner sees their result according to your display settings — the score, pass/fail, and optionally the correct answers, explanations, and your feedback. See Quiz settings and Taking quizzes.
How scores feed the final grade
When a quiz is used as a graded assessment inside a course, its score flows into the learner's overall grade. You decide how much it counts using weighted grading.