To drop the lowest score in a series of items, such as quizzes, you first need to create a category and move the items into it. To learn about creating categories, this guide describes how to set up your gradebook if you weight your grades, while this guide describes setting up your gradebook for straight points.

Important Notes

• If you have set your course up for "natural" (unweighted) grade aggregation, you can ONLY set drop the lowest score if ALL of the items in the category have the same point value. If the possible points differ, the drop the lowest and keep highest fields will be grayed out.
• If you are hoping to extend grace to students for missing a class session or two in an Attendance activity, you'll need to manage that manually within the Attendance link itself. The easiest way is to update the Status set (under More) so that the Excused status has the same point value as Present, then update a student's status to Excused in a session where they are currently marked Absent. (Contat CATL for assistance!)

To drop the lowest item in a category, we're actually going to recommend keeping the highest! See the explanation below the instructions.

1. Click on the Cell actions icon associated with the category name, then select Edit category.
2. In the Keep the highest field, enter the number of scores that you want Moodle to keep. In this example, there are 10 quizzes, so if I want Moodle to drop the lowest score, I'll enter 9 in this field, then Save.
3. After saving, a note is displayed alongside the category information indicating that the scores will be adjusted to keep the highest. This note will not appear in the student's grade view.

Bonus Explanation

Why didn't we set the drop lowest option to one, since that's the desired effect?

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.