I've just returned from Cardiff where I was demonstrating what's upcoming in the OUVLE to our regional staff - these are the staff who employ the OU's tutors for Wales and look after our Welsh students.

Over a 90 minute presentation the one thing that got them talking was the Grade book and in particular the capability of the Grade book to show the student his/her score against the current Course mean.

Their concern ran as follows

• the OU takes students with no prior qualifications; which means we get exactly that, but we also get folks who already have degrees
• the keener students are often the better ones so the first students to try quizzes are likely to be ones who will do well
• where a quiz is formative and results are instantly available this could lead to the initial quiz mean being quite high, and higher than where it will settle down to
• and that this could be dispiriting for someone returning to study who is looking for support in getting their knowledge level up a notch or two
• and this might deter such students right at the start of their course and have an adverse effect on retention

Now I know that Grades can be turned off across the course but I'm starting to ask myself if it might be possible to turn off the display of the Rank/Mean and number of submissions on a quiz by quiz basis. I am suggesting that this only applies to the User view.

I know this is not in our spec. and you might choose to just leave it at that. But while this is all in our minds I thought that I'd ask the question.

It would require an extra selection box on the Categories and items editing form for a Grade item, 'Show course mean to user'

Could it be added?