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GRADE CENTER:
Gradebook Enhancements, Summer 2008
Getting Started With the Grade Center (pdf)
Complete Grade Center Instructions (pdf)
Grade Center: Overview (video)
Grade Center: Determining Grades and Exemptions (video)
Grade Center: Analyzing Grades (video)
Grade Center: Customizing the Grade Center (video)
20 Mini-Tutorials for Commonly-used Tasks (video)
Grade Center Scroll Bar Not Appearing
Grades Not Being Saved
Set As External Grade
Performance Dashboard
Student View of Grade
WARNING:
Using
Blackboard as your sole Grade Center is not recommended. Solution: Export
your Grade Center to a program such as MS Excel to have a copy
and to verify
the calculations.
Gradebook Enhancements,Summer 2008
Overview
Almost entirely redesigned, and newly named, the Grade Center exhibits new capabilities and vast improvements over the previous Gradebook. Some of the new features or improvements include the following:
- A redesigned tool bar, titled the Action Bar, through which multiple functions are possible
- The ability to create and print Report, such as final grades, to hand out to students or other interested parties
- Inline editing: the ability to enter grades directly through the Grade Center spreadsheet
- New grade calculations, Average grade and Minimum/Maximum grade, and improvements to the creation of Weighted grades and Total points grade
- Smart View -- the ability to categorize Students into groupings based on selected criteria. These views can be displayed in the Grade Center. Very useful for AIs and section instructors who want to see only their own students in the Grade Center
- A multitude of ways to customize the display of the Grade Center
- The ability to create Grading Schema: multiple grading scales that match Assessment grades to chosen grade displays, such as text or percent grades
Grade Center main page
The Action Bar on the Grade Center main page contains multiple functions, including the following:
- Adding columns
- Managing Grading Periods
- Grading Schema
- Smart Views
- Emailing Students
- Creating Reports
- Viewing Grade History
Within the Grade Center spreadsheet, it is possible to enter results, such as scores, percentages, or other forms of grading, into the spreadsheet itself.
In the various Columns, cells, and rows, the Instructor can quickly perform multiple functions that formerly required multiple clicks and subsequent navigation to other pages.
Reports
Through the Grade Center, an Instructor may create a Report that displays various grade and Student information. A Report could be used, for example, as a final grade Report or a mid-term progress report. The Instructor can control what grades are displayed in the Report as well as what student information appears. A signature line and any comments can be added. Reports can then be printed from the screen and distributed.
Grade Calculations
In the Grade Center, an Instructor can calculate grades by combining multiple Columns to attain performance results, such as class averages, final grades that are based on a weighted scale, or total points, and so on. These include Weighted grade, Total points grade, Average grade, and Minimum/Maximum grade. Each of these functions allows the Instructor to choose the Columns included, such as all Columns from a Grading Period, all Columns, or selected Columns.
Smart Views
Instructors have the ability to customize the Grade Center to display a subset of Students based on selected criteria. Called Smart Views these customized displays can be saved and used again. Students can be sorted based on Course, Group, performance measurements, or other criteria. Once built and saved, Smart Views become a selectable list item on the Current View drop-down menu of the Grade Center page, enabling easy navigation from one view to another.
Grading Schema
Administrators and Instructors can create Grading Schema-- a diagram based on percentage ranges that matches scores to specific grade displays -- and then use it in grading. For example, a Student’s raw numeric score on a quiz that has 100 possible points is an 88. The Instructor creates and deploys a Grading Schema titled"Standard," in which a percentage of 87.5 to 89.5 equals a B+, this score results in a B+. Conversely, if the grade display option Letter is chosen, the B+ will display to the Student. The Instructor can also choose text as the display option in Grading Schema. Grading Schemas may be edited or added to an ongoing Course and grades will be updated to reflect the changes.
Performance Dashboard
Q: Is there a way I can get a more inclusive picture of my students work and activity in Blackboard?
A:The Performance Dashboard tool provides a window into all types of user activity in a course or organization. All users enrolled in the course are listed, with pertinent information about that user’s progress and activity in the course.
The Performance Dashboard is accessed through the Assessment area of the Control Panel. This page displays the following information:
- Last Name
- First Name
- Username
- Role
- Date / time of last login
- Days since last login
- Review Status - Only displayed if this tool is enabled. Displays how many items have been reviewed / number of items with Review Status enabled. A detailed view of items may be opened in a new window.
- Adaptive Release - Only displayed if this tool is enabled. An overview of the Student path may be opened in a new window.
- View Grades - Only displayed if the Gradebook is enabled. Provides links to the Gradebook: User Grade List page for that user.
- Users can click Print to open the page in a new window in a printer-friendly format. All applicable columns are may be sorted.
Understanding the Review Status indicator
The numbers provided in the Review Status column of the Performance Dashboard indicate the number of items that the Student has marked as Reviewed. Using Adaptive Release rules in a course creates multiple tracks for Students to progress through. This allows for the possibility that each Student will have a different requirement for marking certain items in a course as Reviewed. At any time in a course, items in a Student's track may or may not be visible to them. The Performance Dashboard provides an at-this-moment view of the item availability and the Student's progress on reviewing items.
The Review Status indicator links to a list of the items that the course user sees as Reviewed and
Mark Reviewed in the course.
The Review Status column is only visible if Review Status has been enabled for the course.
Link to Adaptive Release
The Adaptive Release indicator in the Performance Dashboard for each user opens the Course Map, showing every possible item in the course. Icons beside each item in the Course Map indicate the visibility of an item to that course user, and the review status of any items with a review requirement, if applicable.
ADAPTIVE RELEASE AND REVIEW StaTUS ICONS:
Visible - this item is visible to that course user.
Invisible - this item is not visible to that course user.
Reviewed - this item has been marked as Reviewed by the course user.
Mark Reviewed - this item is displayed as Mark Reviewed to the course user.
The Adaptive Release column is only visible if Adaptive Release has been enabled for the course.
Set As External Grade
Q: What does the column option in the Grade Center set as external brade mean?
A: Though not something we currently need to be concerned with at Princeton, as we do not integrate the Blackboard Grade Center with an external system, following is an explanation of the designation "external grade."
In brief, the term "external grade" denotes the "grade of record,", the final course igrade. In previous versions this notion did not exist, you were stuck with using either the plain total or the weighted total, or making your own column for a final grade but without having a real indication other than name that this was the final grade column. In the release 8.0 Grade Center however, complex gradebook calculations can be executed, and thus it is expected that many instructors will want to designate some other calculated column as the final grade column. Blackboard also intended that the "external grade" designation would facilitate gradebook integration with external systems, where the final course grade auto-populates the external system's grade record. Unfortunately, for a number of complex reasons, we are not yet able to do that at Princeton.
You must always have one column marked as external grade. If the wrong column has been marked as external grade and you want to turn that off, simply mark another column as external grade instead. The default for this is the classic "Total" column.
Graddes Not Being Saved
Q: When I enter a grade and press "Enter" I just get a spinning icon that doesn't stop. Why won't my grade save ?
A: This could mean that the version of Blackboard has been updated since you last used the Grade Center and your browser has cached the older version of the JavaScript file. To fix this problem, clear your browser's cache.
Cache-clearing instructions:
Internet Explorer 8
1. Once your browser is open, click the Tools menu and select Internet Options.
2. Make sure the General tab is selected.
3. Under "Browsing History" click "Delete..." button
4. In the new window make sure the box next to Temporary Internet Files is checked, then click "Delete" button.
Internet Explorer 7
1. Once your browser is open, click the Tools menu and select Internet Options.
2. Make sure the General tab is selected.
3. Under "Browsing History" click "Delete"
4. In the new window, click Delete Files in the Temporary Internet Files section.
Internet Explorer 6
1. Once your browser is open, click the Tools menu and select Internet Options.
2. Make sure the General tab is selected.
3. Click Delete Files in the Temporary Internet Files section.
Firefox
1. Once your browser is open, click the Tools menu and select Clear Private Data
2. Make sure that "Cache" is checked.
3. Click Clear Private Data Now.
Safari
1. Once your browser is open, click the Safari menu and select Empty Cache.
2. Confirm the action by clicking Empty in the pop-up window
Student View of Grades
Q: What eaxtly is visible to students when they look at their grades?
A: The first column in My Grades, Item Name, lists all the Grade and Calculated Grade (such as Running Weighted Total) columns in your grade center that are available to students. By default they are are available to students. To make a grade or calculated column unavailable to students, click the chevron (double down arrow) in the column header, select "Modify Column" from the dropdown menu that appears, under Options select "No" for "Show this column in My Grades," then submit. The column header in the grade center will now have an icon of a circle with a red slash through it to indicate students cannot see it.
The second column in My Grades, Details, shows Grading Period (if you've assign one to the item), Category (again, if you've assign one), and Description (if you've entered one, in the case of a graded item, or a description of the type of calculated column it is, as you can see in my sample image).
The third column, due date, is created when the item is created. Of course, calculated columns would not have due dates.
The fourth column, Last Submitted, Modified, or Graded, is self-explanatory.
The Grade column is the grade you've assigned, or the calculated grade if it is a Total, for example. If you set the item to be viewed only as a letter grade, the student will not see the point score. By the way, students no longer see the class average for a grade. If the grade is for an assignment, it is clickable so the student can see details related to the assignment. The grade is clickable if the time is a multiple attempt Blackboard test, as well, so students can see their grade history for the various attempts they have made.
The Possible Points column reveals how many points the item is worth.
The final column, Comments, shows the student any comments you enter for them in relation to the graded item. Note that when you add comments, you have two fields, "Feedback to User," which is what the student sees, and "Grading Notes", which is only visible to instructor, TAs and graders.
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