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How are points calculated?

Event-based

The plugin observes the actions performed by learners and attribute them points. By default, XP comes with a few pre-defined rules to determine how many points a learner should earn.

In Moodle, such actions are referred to as Events. Events contain information about the action that was just performed: where it happened, what it was, who did it, etc... It also contains the educational level of the action, either participating, teaching or other.

As a starting point, XP attributes points to learners for the actions of educational level participating, when they create, edit or read course contents. For example, they would receive 45 points when creating a new forum discussion, and receive 9 points when reading course resources.

These default rules are simple but educators can do a lot more. They can create much more granular rules, such as giving more or less points for a specific activity. Or giving more value to submitting one assignment over the other, etc...

Actions that are ignored

Only the users with the capability block/xp:earnxp can earn points. By default, this capability is given to the student role. Also, actions triggered by guests, non-logged in users or administrators are ignored.

The following events are always ignored:

  • Events from another context than course or module
  • Events having another educational level than participating
  • Events flagged as anonymous, e.g. in an anonymous Feedback

The default rules of XP ignore some events that are redundant, and would cause points to be awarded twice for the same action.

Repeated actions within a short time interval are also ignored to prevent cheating when the cheat guard is enabled.

note

Since XP 3.15, administrators can be allowed to earn points by enabling the adminscanearnxp admin setting.

See also

Grade-based rewards

Points can be awarded based on the grades given to learners. This requires XP+.

Drops

With drops, points can be awarded anywhere. This requires XP+.