How to manage grades in an online course

List each graded item in the course and decide whether it is a quiz, essay, assignment or manual mark. Set the points available for each item before students begin, and document whether you will use the latest quiz attempt or another rule for retakes.

LearnDash scores quiz questions by points, supports decimal points for most question types, and lets you set points for assignments. It does not automatically turn all course activity into a weighted final grade without a gradebook system.

Go to LearnDash LMS > Quizzes, edit a quiz and open its builder or settings. Give each question the correct point value, set the passing score and choose what students should see on the results page, such as the overall score, category scores or feedback.

For essay questions, choose whether they remain pending until graded, receive full points temporarily, or are marked as graded automatically. Do not leave essay grading decisions until launch day: an ungraded essay can leave a quiz pending or prevent progression when the learner has not reached the required points.

Use an essay question when the answer belongs inside a quiz. To review submissions, go to LearnDash LMS > Quizzes > Submitted Essays, filter the list, enter points and approve the response. Open an individual essay if you need to change its status or add a comment.

For uploaded work, enable assignment uploads on the relevant lesson or topic. Choose manual approval if the work must be reviewed before the lesson is complete, then use LearnDash LMS > Assignments to download the file, award points and leave feedback. Approved assignments cannot be unapproved, so check the points before approving.

For a small course, the manual route is often enough. Open a user’s LearnDash profile to see quiz scores, completion information, essay status and quiz statistics. Administrators and group leaders can also export Course Data for progress and Quiz Data for scores, attempt dates and pass status.

This route is simple, but it is split across quizzes, assignments, user profiles and CSV files. LearnDash does not give you a single place for arbitrary manual grades, weighted components and a final course total in the core tools. Turn on Quiz Statistics before students take the quiz; enabling it later will not recover earlier answer data.

To correct a quiz result, review the user’s quiz information and statistics before changing course completion data. For an essay, edit the submission and update its grading status and points. For an assignment, open the submission and change its points even after approval.

Keep a short record of why a score changed. If you manually mark a lesson, topic or quiz complete from the user profile, that changes progression status rather than creating a separate academic grade. Deleting quiz data is permanent and allows the user to take the quiz again.

If you need weighted scoring, manual components such as attendance, feedback beside each grade, student-by-student editing and CSV reporting, use LearnDash LMS Gradebook instead of maintaining several admin screens and spreadsheets. Configure the gradebook, connect its quiz and assignment components, add manual grades where needed and check the calculated totals before publishing them.

This is the fast route for detailed academic tracking. The manual LearnDash route remains suitable for courses that only need quiz results, assignment points, completion status and occasional CSV exports.