How To: Drop the Lowest Score (or Keep the Highest Score) for an Assignment

The Moodle Gradebook features the ability to remove an item from being calculated into a category total or course score. For example, Professor Smith assigns 11 homework assignments and has created a category in the Gradebook Setup that contains all of them. At the end of the term, she wishes to remove their lowest Assignment score. That way, Moodle will calculate the student's 10 best scores for the Assignments portion of the class. The Drop the lowest feature can be enabled within the grade category settings. 

Note: It is important to note that gradable items without a score are not counted against your students. If a student has yet to pass in an assignment, it is recommended that you give him/her a zero in either the Assignment itself or manually in the Grader Report. Otherwise, Moodle will not include empty grades in its course total calculation

Using Keep the highest score instead

When you use the "drop lowest" option, the lowest score will be dropped from the beginning of the term. Thus, a student may not perceive a problem with quiz scores (for instance) since a failed quiz won't be factored into the category total — not until a worse grade is achieved on a subsequent quiz.

By keeping the highest, all scores earned up until the last quiz is taken will be factored into the category total, giving students a more accurate view of their overall grade throughout the term.

To drop the lowest item in a category (each step corresponds to an image on the right):

1. Click on the Edit pull-down menu associated with the category name, then select Edit settings.
2. In the Grade category option area, click on Show more to display more options.
3. In the Keep the highest field, enter the number of scores that you want Moodle to keep. In this example, there are four quizzes, so if I want Moodle to drop the lowest score, I'll enter a three in this field, then Save changes.
4. After saving, a note is displayed under the category description that indicates that the scores will be adjusted as desired. In this case, the top three out of four quiz scores will count. This note will also appear in the student's grade view.

If you still want to drop the lowest score

Do not apply this option until the end of the semester. Also, before using this function, fill any empty cells with zeros; otherwise, those cells will not be counted as a score when used with the Exclude Empty Grades option.

Do not have activities with weights of Zero. While this is a common technique to not count an activity, it breaks the rule that all grade items must be of equal value for this option to be available.

1. In your course's Administration block (usually found on the left sidebar), select Gradebook Setup
2. You'll only be able to drop the lowest score if it's located in a category (for example: Quizzes or Homeworks). 
3. For the category you would like to edit, click Edit, then Edit Settings under the Action column.
4. On the next page, click the Show more link to see the full list of settings.