Gradebook
This document describes how instructors and teachers' assistants can use the Blackboard gradebook to keep track of student grades and make them available to students.
Instructors, teachers' assistants, and graders in the course can see and change grades for everyone in the class, but each student can only view their own grades.
Add an Item
To begin adding items (i.e. columns, or assignments) to the gradebook, go to the Control Panel (see My Courses documentation if you don't know how). In the Assessment area, click Gradebook:
This displays your current gradebook. To add an item, click the +Add Item link. Or, if you are going to add several at once, you may want to click Manage Items, then +Add Item.
This displays a screen where you enter the details of this assignment:
You must enter an Item Name and Points Possible, everything else is optional. If you choose a Category for your item, you will be able to weight grades by these groups. If the list of categories doesn't have what you want, you can add a category (go back to the main gradebook, click Gradebook Settings, then Manage Gradebook Categories).
When you're done entering information, click Submit.
If you use the Assignments feature, SafeAssign, or Graded Discussion Boards, that will add a column for you. In that case, you will not need to add the item yourself here.
Entering Grades
To enter all the grades for a single assignment, go to the Gradebook, and click on the link at the top of the column. Next, click Item Grade List:
You can then enter grades for each student:
Notice the stupid design of putting the students' last names as far as possible from the place where you enter the grade. Because of this, you may want to enter grades in Excel, and transfer them to Blackboard (see below), or print out grade sheets with students listed in the exact same order as Blackboard so you can enter the grades all in a row.
When you're finished, click Submit.
You can also enter grades one at a time from the main gradebook, click on the litte dash to enter that grade. Or in the Control Panel you can choose Gradebook Views then View Grades by User to see all of the grades for one student.
Transfer between Blackboard and Excel (Download)
To copy grades from Blackboard into Excel, use the Download Grades link on the main Gradebook page:
The next page asks which "delimiter" to use. Either works okay for Excel, click Submit.
After a moment, this page appears. Click Download to save on your computer, then open that file in Excel. (Other speadsheet programs should be able to read it, too).
Transfer between Blackboard and Excel (Upload)
To copy grades from Excel into Blackboard , use the Upload Grades link on the main Gradebook page:
Next, click Browse to find the file you want to send to Blackboard:
Since Blackboard looks for a very specific format, it's easiest to follow the instructions above and download the gradebook with the empty spaces, edit that file, the upload it back to Blackboard.
It's usually best to copy between matching columns. If you haven't created a gradebook item yet, you can choose the "Create New Gradebook Item", and Blackboard will copy the grades there once you've entered the details for that item. Click Submit.
Note: You can only copy one column at a time. Repeat as necessary.
Next, decide which grades to send. Usually, you'll click Select All, then Submit:
Weighting Grades
If you assign the Points Possible of each item according to its value in the class, then you won't need to weight grades. For example, if you have two tests worth 25% each, and a paper worth 50%, you could assign 250 points each to the tests, and 500 points to the paper.
However, if you would rather grade items out of an arbitrary scale that is not connected to their value in the semester syllabus (like a scale of 1-10, or a percentage 0-100%), then you can weight the grades. You will need to enter all the gradebook items for the entire semester before weighting the grades. Start on the main Gradebook page, and click Weight Grades:
You can then choose whether to weight by category or item. In either case, the percentages need to add up to 100%
For a more detailed description of how to weight grades, see Scranton University's page on Weighting Course Grades.
Back to Blackboard Overview.