How Exclude Empty Grades works:

Excluding empty grades, when initiated, omits grades that have not yet been entered (0, zero, counts as a value towards an entered grade); therefore, only graded items will be taken into consideration when calculating the course total. 

Here's an example for grades in the Assignments category with three assignments, each worth 100 points:

• Assignment 1: 80/100
• Assignment 2: 90/100
• Assignment 3: No grade yet (empty)

If Exclude Empty Grades is enabled 

The total grade will only be calculated based on the two graded assignments (Assignment 1 and Assignment 2). The student’s current average would be (80 + 90) / 2 = 85%.

If Exclude Empty Grades is disabled, the missing grade for Assignment 3 would be treated as a 0. The total grade would then be (80 + 90 + 0) / 3 = 56.7%.

How can this be useful? 

• For ongoing courses, excluding empty grades helps to show a more accurate picture of a student's current achievement in the course.
• If disabled, you may want to ensure students are aware of missing work since it impacts their grades.

How to access Exclude Empty Grades:

1. On your course page, click Grades from from the red, course navigation bar at the top of the page. 
2. Choose Gradebook setup from the dropdown menu.

You may change the option to exclude empty grades at two points:

• At the course-level - Empty grades excluded for the entire course 
• At the gradebook category-level - Empty grades excluded for a specific category

3. To access the exclude empty grades option for the whole course, in the Actions column, click the ellipsis to the right of the course name and select Edit category. To do this for a category in the gradebook, click the ellipsis to the far right of the category name and select Edit category.

4. Enable or disable the Exclude empty grades option within the Edit category pop-up window.

5. Click the red Save button at the bottom right of the window when you're done.