README

Colour-codes the Moodle gradebook grader report so teachers can see at a glance where students are struggling and excelling. Each grade cell is shaded by the grade's percentage of its item's range, from the lowest palette colour (red by default) through orange and yellow to green, with a distinct colour (blue by default) only for full marks.

Supports Moodle 5.2 and 5.3.

Features

Shades regular grade items, category totals and the course total on Grades › Grader report.
Percentage = (final grade − minimum) / (maximum − minimum) × 100, computed on the server with the same minimum and maximum the grader report itself uses (for totals, the per-grade range from aggregation). The displayed cell text is never parsed, so letter, percentage and real display types all work.
Scales use the grade's position in the scale (the first item is 0%, the last 100%).
Left uncoloured: empty grades, text-only items, items with no numeric range, excluded grades, and items that are waiting to be recalculated.
Hidden and locked grades are shaded normally and keep their icons. On a shaded cell a hidden grade is shown in italics instead of core's muted grey, which would be hard to read on the colour. Teachers without moodle/grade:viewhidden get no shading for grades the report hides from them, and totals follow the values the report shows them.
Overridden grades use the overridden final grade.
The grade value itself is never changed. Text in shaded cells is shown dark or light, whichever contrasts better with the cell's colour.
Survives the grader report's dynamic behaviour (collapsing columns, editing mode, sorting, paging, sticky header and footer).

Settings

Site (Site administration › Plugins › Local plugins › Grade heatmap)

Enable grade heatmap: site-wide on/off.
Colouring mode: Smooth gradient (colours blend from one start to the next) or Discrete bands (one solid colour per band).
Palette: the colours from lowest to highest, each with the percentage it starts at. The lowest starts at 0%. A colour that starts at 100% is used only for full marks. Colours can be added and removed (2 to 20 colours). Default:

Colour Starts at

#f28b82 0%

#fbbc77 50%

#fde68a 75%

#8fd19e 95%

#8ab4f8 100% (full marks only)

Colour	Starts at
`#f28b82`	0%
`#fbbc77`	50%
`#fde68a`	75%
`#8fd19e`	95%
`#8ab4f8`	100% (full marks only)

Course (Grader report › Preferences: Grader report › "Grade heatmap" section)

Teachers with local/gradeheatmap:manage can choose, for their course:

Colouring mode: site default, smooth gradient or discrete bands.
Palette: tick Use a custom palette for this course and edit the colours as above.

These course settings apply to everyone who sees the heatmap in that course. They are included in course backups and removed when the course is deleted.

Per user

A Grade heatmap switch in the grader report's action bar turns the shading on and off for the current user. The choice is saved as a user preference.

Capabilities

Capability	Default roles	Purpose
`local/gradeheatmap:view`	Teacher, Non-editing teacher, Manager	See the heatmap on the grader report (also needs gradereport/grader:view and moodle/grade:viewall)
`local/gradeheatmap:manage`	Teacher, Manager	Change the course's mode and palette

How it works

A hook callback on the grader report checks the capabilities and loads an AMD module. The module reads the user and item ids from the report's cells (id="u<userid>i<itemid>") and fetches the percentages of the users on the page with one call to the local_gradeheatmap_get_percentages web service. The service checks the capabilities and restricts the users to those the caller may see in the grader report, including separate groups. All grades are fetched in bulk, not per cell. The palette colours are CSS custom properties (--local-gradeheatmap-colour-1 … -N). The module only reads them and sets each cell's colour.

Privacy

The plugin stores one user preference (the heatmap switch), declared and exported through the Privacy API. The course settings table holds no personal data.

adamjenkins / moodle-local_gradeheatmap

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