Articles (39)

Assign columns to a grading period

Steps to assign columns to a grading period in the Grade Center.

Blackboard Grade Center: Override Grades

How to overwrite an existing grade in a Blackboard course (available to Instructors, Teaching Assistants, and Graders). When a grade is changed, the new data is automatically incorporated into existing weighted, total, and calculated grade columns — and an entry is made in the grade history.

Blackboard Grade Center: Show/Hide Columns

In Blackboard, every gradable item has a corresponding column in the Grade Center. To delete columns, the matching items must also be deleted. Alternatively, instructors can temporarily hide columns from themselves (in the Full Grade Center) and/or from students (in My Grades). Please follow these steps to change column visibility.

Blackboard Grade Center: View and Grade by Question

Instructions to view and grade by question (rather than by student) in a Blackboard Original course's Grade Center. This process: saves time, allows you to concentrate on the answer for one question across all submissions, lets you see how all students responded, allows you to provide immediate feedback about how the group performed on that particular question, and allows you to easily adjust the score for a specific question (for all or many students).

Blackboard: Copy the Grade Center to Another Course

Steps to course copy Grade Center from one course to another.

Blackboard: Download students' assignment files (for offline grading)

This article covers the process to download students' assignment submissions/files: individually or in bulk. Local files are useful if you would like to mark them up in another application (Word) or if you will not have access to a reliable internet connection while grading. You may also wish to use this feature to archive submissions for later use. The article also covers the process of adding grades, comments, and uploading marked-up files to the Grade Center, so students can review them.

Blackboard: Weighted Grade Column Calculations

The weighted column generates a grade based on the result of selected columns and categories, and their respective percentages. When you create a weighted column, you can include regular/automatically-created columns, other calculated columns, and other weighted columns.

Change column categories

Steps to change column(s) categories.

Create a category

How to create a Grade Center category.

Create a grade column

You can create grade columns for activities that took place outside of class, such as a science fair or a juried art show. Or, you may assign credit for participation or attendance at an event. For manually added items, no submissions exist. The column is populated when you assign the grades.

Create a grading period

You can create grading periods to group Grade Center columns together by a period of time, such as terms, semesters, or quarters. You can also create grading periods to group columns together by a shared characteristic, such as all the gradable columns for a group project. To create a date range grading period, you can select a setting to automatically associate all existing columns with due dates that occur in the date range.

Create individual student grade reports

You can create printable reports for your courses and students. You can also create a progress report that contains grades from a particular grading period for a defined group of students in a class. You can only choose students within one section to appear in a report. You must run a separate report for each section.

Delete a grade in Grade Center

Steps to delete a grade in the Grade Center.

Delete a manually created column

Deleting a Column is a final action and cannot be undone.

Delete an Automatically Created Grade Center Column

The item itself must be deleted from the Content Area. The column then will be removed automatically from the Grade Center.

Download or print from the Grade Center

To eliminate potential double entry of Grade Center data, you can perform offline grading and import grades into the Grade Center. You can also upload grades from external sources such as an Excel spreadsheet or a comma-separated values (CSV) file. You must format data specifically to upload correctly and to synchronize with existing Grade Center data.

You can also use Grades Journey to save and share grade information for individual courses and assignments if your institution uses this featu

Edit or clear an assignment attempt

On the Grade Details page, you can view a student's attempts and grade history, assign and edit a grade, and clear and exempt grades.

Enter or Change a Blackboard Grade

Assigning a grade can be done directly in a Grade Center cell or from within the Grade Details page.

Exempt a grade

Students can be Exempted from a grade from the Grade Center or the Grade Details page. Exempted grades are not added into any statistical or total grade calculations, Blackboard treats it like they were never assigned that assignment.

Fix a missing scroll bar in the Grade Center

Missing Grade Center scroll bars are a symptom of the default font size on your computer being set too high. The following instructions show you how to always display Grade Center scroll bars.

Give feedback on graded items

Steps to give feedback on graded items.

Grade Schemas: Using Alternative Values in Grade Center

Grade Schemas allow for the use of non-standard values in Grade Center. Values could include, but are not limited to, Pass, Fail, Excellent, Poor, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory.

Hide a column from students

How to hide a Grade Center column from students.

Hide rows and columns in the Grade Center

Steps to hide rows and/or columns in the Grade Center.

Needs Grading options

If you have a heavy grading workload, the Needs Grading page can help you determine what needs attention first. You can view all items ready for grading or review.

Orange triangle in the Grade Center scores

If a grade was changed using the Manual Override function in Blackboard then there will be a small orange triangle next to the score in the Full Grade Center.

Organize the Grade Center columns

Steps to organize columns in Grade Center.

Smart Views

A smart view is a focused look at the Grade Center that shows only the columns that match a set of criteria. The view is saved for continued use. When the Grade Center includes a great number of students and columns, you can use smart views to quickly find data. Several smart views are available by default, but you can also create your own.

Switch between categories

Steps to switch between Grade Center categories.

Switch between the Grade Center statuses

Steps to switch Grade Center statuses.

Types of grade columns

In the Grade Center, three types of columns appear: user, calculated, and grade. Each column has a menu with options. The options that appear vary depending on the type of column.

Undo a grade change

After a grade has been changed with the Manual Override command, it can be reverted to the original value.

View a grade history

On the Grade History page, you can view all grade actions within a course and export the information. You can view all the data for grade submissions for the course within a set date range.

View and grade anonymously

Whenever you want to add another layer of fairness and impartiality to your grading, you can use the anonymous grading feature. You won't know who made the submission, so you aren't unduly influenced by a student's previous performance, class participation, conflicts, race, gender, or perceived student aptitude. This practice can also contribute to the student-instructor relationship because students are assured that grading was unbiased.

View and grade SafeAssign submissions

When you create an assignment, you can enable the SafeAssign originality detection service. When you assign grades, you can access an originality report with pertinent information about the sources used.

View Instructor Feedback in Blackboard for Students

This article explains the different types of feedback available in Blackboard and provides a walk-through of how students can access them.

View Student Usage/Activity Reports

You can run several types of course reports to view information about course usage and activity. You can view summaries of course usage such as which course areas are used most frequently and course access patterns for specific students.

View two students side-by-side in Grade Center

How to view two students side-by-side in Grade Center.

Work Offline with Grade Data - Sync Local Grading File with Bb

Blackboard Grade Center has an export/import feature which will produce a downloadable, specially-formatted spreadsheet that can be used to work on grading while you are offline. When you are finished editing the grades in that local file (using Excel), you can save your changes and import the document back in to the Grade Center in order to sync your updates/edits from offline over to the online Grade Center.