Grading

About the Gradebook (formerly called the Grade Center)

Flexible Grading

Blackboard Ultra includes a new Flexible Grading interface to support grading by question, student, or a mix and match approach. Flexible grading is an optimized grading experience that provides instructors with the flexibility to grade in their preferred style. With flexible grading, you can:

Easily review the status of your grading tasks and prioritize your time where it is needed most.
Provide inline, multimedia feedback direct to students.
Easily access grading rubrics, anti-plagiarism checkers, and more as you work through your grading tasks.

To learn more about Flexible Grading, see the Grade Tests with Flexible Grading or the Grade Assignments with Flexible Grading help articles.

Navigate Grading

See the Ultra Gradebook help article or view the Gradebook video for more information and instructions for the following:

Access the Gradebook
Gradebook Settings
Accomodations
Send Reminders
Add Gradable Items, Calculations, or Attendance
Download Results
Download Submissions
View Graded Item Statistics

Grade Columns

The gradebook is populated with students when they're enrolled in your course. You'll see all the coursework that's specific to the course you're in. You can grade coursework, manage items, and post grades.

The Overall Grade column displays a calculated running tally of all the items you grade and post that count toward the overall course grade. It appears in the gradebook next to the students' names so you can quickly see how each student is performing.

The Gradable Items list is your default view of the course gradebook. You can view all the coursework you've assigned and your grading progress. You can also access all management functions. Instructors can rearrange items from this view. You can switch to the Students tab to view an overall picture of each student’s engagement.

The student grid shows the scores students have earned. Student names appear in each row and columns display graded items. You can grade and manage items in the grid view.

See the Grade Columns help article for information on creating and editing grade columns.

Grade Schemas

Within your courses, grades are displayed in the Gradebook and on the Submissions page for your assessments. You can choose to display grades in different ways with grading schemas. A schema takes the points scored on an item and compares them to the item's total points possible to derive a percentage. This percentage is then mapped to a score range and displayed as a grade, such as a letter (A, B, C) or Pass/Fail.

The default grading schemas available are:

Points.
Percentage.
Complete/incomplete.
Letter.

When you grade an item, a numeric score appears as the grade by default. Grades appear in the Grades page, in the Gradebook or Grades tab in each course, with the graded items for students, such as assignments and tests. Go to the Gradebook Settings to make changes to the default grading schema.

See the Grading Schemas help article for more information.

Grading Tasks

Assign Grades

You can choose where you want to start grading:

From the Activity Stream
From the base navigation menu
From an assignment
From the Gradebook
From the Submissions page

Blackboard Annotate

You can use Bb Annotate for inline grading in your courses. Bb Annotate offers a more robust feature set to provide customizable feedback to students. Features include a sidebar summary view, freehand drawing tools, various color selections, and much more.

See the Annotate video for more information.

Calculate Grades

You can easily add calculations to your course gradebook. A calculation is a formula that produces a numerical result used to view or assign grades, usually based on other graded items.

You can create your own formulas and use common arithmetic operations, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and use group operators (parentheses).

You can add calculations based on the average, total, maximum, or minimum of the variables you include, such as categories, graded items, and other calculations. For example, add a calculation that displays the average of all assignments so students have an overall picture of their performance. You can add as many calculations as you need.

In the Ultra Course View, each course has one default grading schema used for grades and calculations. You can't create new schemas at this time, but you can make changes to the default schema.

See the Calculate Grades help article for more information.

Override Grades

Override grades are grades you assign manually, for example, if you type in the grade pill in the gradebook. An override label appears next to the grade.

If you allow multiple attempts, when you manually edit the final grade for an item, you're assigning an override grade.

You can only override the final grade, not the grades for each attempt. An override grade takes precedence over all other grade entries, including attempts a student submits after you assign an override grade. Also, if you re-grade a question, that re-graded score is applied to the attempt score. If you manually change the grade for the assessment in the gradebook, the re-graded score doesn't change the override score.

If you go on to grade another attempt after you manually changed the final grade, the override grade still supersedes the second attempt grade you assign. You may want to deduct points after a student has made all attempts or the due date has passed.

If you override a grade with an associated rubric, the override grade appears in the rubric's grade pill. When you view the content, the Rubric Details panel states that the grade is overridden.

See the Override Grades help article for more information.

Work Offline with Grade Data

You can download the full gradebook or select columns from your Ultra courses. However, items with anonymous grading enabled can't be selected and won't be included in the downloaded file. Select the Download grades icon in the Gradebook.

You can export the file in a comma-delimited (CSV) or tab-delimited (XLS) format. You choose whether to save the file to your device or the Content Collection.

You can import your downloaded file into an application such as Microsoft® Excel® to do statistical analysis or other ad hoc computational work.

These columns are included in a downloaded file:

Last name, first name, and username
Student ID, last access, and availability
Grade columns
Attendance
Manually added items
Calculations

See the Work Offline with Grade Data help article for more information.

My Grades

The My Grades page allows students to view posted grades and the status of gradable items. When a student accesses My Grades via the Global Navigation menu they see grade information from all courses in one location. My Grades may include item names, details, due dates, student and instructor dates of activity, posted grades, points possible, links to rubrics used for grading and instructor's comments about the items.

As an instructor you will not see any information if you click on My Grades in a course, just the message "Users with your role do not have personal grades". Instructors can use Student Preview mode to access My Grades and see the student view of grades in their course.

There are three ways for students to access the My Grades page: From inside a course 1) click My Grades on the left course menu, 2) click Student Tools on the course menu then My Grades. To see grades for all courses 3) access the Blackboard Global Navigation Menu (click your name in the upper right) and click the My Grades icon.

Visit Blackboard's Grades page or view the Check Grades video to provide information to your students about accessing their grades.

Rubrics

Rubrics can help ensure consistent and impartial grading and help students focus on your expectations.

A rubric is a scoring tool you can use to evaluate graded work. When you create a rubric, you divide the assigned work into parts. You can provide clear descriptions of the characteristics of the work associated with each part, at varying levels of skill.

Students can use a rubric to organize their efforts to meet the requirements of the graded work. When you allow students access to rubrics before they complete their work, you provide transparency into your grading methods.

Grade with a rubric

After you create a rubric and associate it with an assessment or discussion, you can use it for grading. The assignment, test, or discussion page displays the rubric you chose. You may associate only one rubric to each item.

Select the Submissions link to begin grading. On the Submissions page, select student names to access their individual submissions and the rubric.

See the Grade with Rubrics help article or view the Grade Using Rubrics video for more information.

Grading Analytics

Grade History

It is important for instructors to be able to track any changes made to grades in a course for audit purposes. The grade history records provide a useful audit trail helpful for addressing, for example, student questions and grade challenges. You can download them from the gradebook.

See the Grade History help article for more information and instructions to see the grade history.

Question Analysis

Question analysis provides statistics on overall performance, assessment quality, and individual questions. This data helps you recognize questions that might be poor discriminators of student performance. Question analysis is for assessments with questions. You can run a report before all submissions are in if you want to check the quality of your questions and make changes.

Uses for questions analysis:

Improve questions for future assessments or to adjust credit on current attempts
Discuss assessment results with your class
Provide a basis for remedial work
Improve classroom instruction

See the Question Analysis help article for more information.

Blackboard/Campus Connection Grade Import

The Blackboard/Campus Connection Grade Import now works in Ultra courses.

Blackboard/Campus Connection Grade Import allow the instructor of record to import term-based final grades from their Blackboard course(s) directly into Campus Connection. The option provides a one-way transfer of data and will help to ensure a secure and accurate recording of grades from Blackboard to Campus Connection.

The "Overall Grade" column is what is used to pull the data from Blackboard to Campus Connection. This column has been pre-configured to be the default grade column to be used with the Campus Connection grade import. This column is not required to be used.