Grade Center Reporting

Grade Center Reporting within Blackboard offers options for creating and printing reports for either your entire Grade Center or for individual students or projects.  Customized reports based on specific criteria can also be generated.  Individual reports can be printed for each each student.  These can also be saved as PDFs for instructor records - it can be very helpful to create an individual report for each student at the end of a semester and save these as PDFs so that you have them for future reference, if needed.  Check out Blackboard OnDemand's video for Creating a Grade Report.

Grade Center reports can be created from the Reports menu on the action bar.  You can then select options to be included within the report.

Grade History

Grade History can also be accessed from the Reports drop-down list within the Full Grade Center.  The Grade History page records all activity and changes within the Grade Center and can be filtered to display a specific date range (1 day, 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, 6 months, all) or to display items by column name, score, or date.  The Grade History for a course can be downloaded and saved as an Excel file.  Watch Viewing and Downloading Grade History for a video tutorial of this process.

Grade Center Statistics

Statistics can be viewed within the Blackboard Grade Center for both users and columns.  Users' statistics pages will provide information about a student's ID, contact information, and items completed.  Column statistics pages include information about a graded item, including average, median, and standard deviation.  There are several viewing and filtering options available on both statistics pages.

Download Grade Center

From within the Full Grade Center, you can download a copy of the Grade Center to an Excel spreadsheet.  This will allow you to have full access to scores within the Grade Center outside of Blackboard, should any questions arise over student grades, without the need to restore an entire archived course.  This does not save student submissions or your feedback (archiving the course will do that), but does allow you to have access to all grades.  This should be done for every Blackboard course once a semester ends and grades have been entered but can also be done at any time during the semester.  The following guides, provided by the Teaching and Learning Center provide step-by-step instructions, as well as additional explanations.

• Ending a Semester Guide
• Saving Course and Grade Data Guide

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For additional assistance with the Blackboard Grade Center, contact the TLC at tlc@icc.edu or (309) 694-8908, or visit us in room 240A on the East Peoria campus.

Next week our Blackboard Users' Group will meet in the TLC on Wednesday, October 7 at 12noon or Thursday, October 8 at 3pm - participants may attend either session.

Our November blog series will focus on the Blackboard reports.

Managing the Grade Center

Blackboard's Grade Center is actually very complex - in this week's post, we'll cover a variety of ways that you can customize the Grade Center to help it work more effectively for you.  

All of the areas described below can be found within the Manage drop-down menu within the Full Grade Center (shown to the right).  Each of the headings below links to an official Blackboard help page that includes step-by-step instructions for managing and customizing any of these areas:

Grading Schema

Grading schema are set by default to a 90/80/70/60 grading scale.  By default, a numeric score (points) shows in the Grade Center when an item is graded.  If you choose to show letters instead of points - or to display a letter grade within a Total column - the letter will be determined based on the Grading Schema.  This can be customized if you use a different grading scale.  You can also create different types of grading schema, other than letters, such as Pass/Fail, Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory, or ones based on a numeric or other rating criteria.

Color Coding

Rules based on either grades or status can be set to color code the Grade Center grid to provide a visual overview of student information.  Colors are only visible in the instructor's Grade Center; students will never be able to view these.  Rules for grading statuses of In Progress, Needs Grading, or Exempt are already created, but background and text colors for the cells need to be set if you wish to use these.  Instructors can also set custom criteria so that grades that fall above/below or within a range of a certain percentage will appear with a colored background/text.  Check out the video overview for color coding the Grade Center:

 

Categories

Categories are used for grouping related columns together, particularly for the purpose of using a weighted grade system.  Categories can also be used to filter your view of the Grade Center to view columns associated with only one category, to create a Smart View (see topic below), or to create a printable report of all columns associated with a specific category.  By default, there are eight categories included in the Grade Center: Assignment, Blog, Discussion, Journal, Self and Peer, Survey, Test, Wiki (when the tool is available and you created a gradable wiki).  One of these eight categories is automatically assigned to the Grade Center column when you create a gradable item within any of the categories.  While the default categories cannot be deleted, instructors do have the ability to create additional custom categories that fit their own courses.

Smart Views

Smart Views provide a focused view of the Grade Center based on either specific columns, categories, or students.  Once you create a Smart View, the information is saved within your course to be viewed again.  By default, there are Smart Views for Assignments and Tests that are saved as favorites and display under the Full Grade Center label on the navigation panel.  You can switch between Full Grade Center and any Smart View at any time.  Sometimes, when multiple sections of classes are enrolled into the same Blackboard course, Smart Views are helpful for seeing a focused view of each section within the Grade Center.  Smart Views can also be created as part of the group setup process.  These are very helpful when there are numerous students enrolled in the course, and you want to only view a select group or section at a time.

Row Visibility / Column Organization

Rows can be hidden within a Grade Center - this is especially useful if a student has withdrawn from your course and you have made them unavailable so that they can no longer access the course.  Hiding their row in the Grade Center will hide it from your view, and you can always show it again if you should need to access any data about the student.

Additionally, you can select column organization to rearrange any columns in the Grade Center, freeze columns in the top table so that they remain stationary as you scroll across the Grade Center, hide columns from the instructor view (this is useful if you have entered grades for an entire column and want to hide it from the Grade Center so that you don't have to scroll past every column to enter new grades), show hidden columns, and change a column's category or grading period.  

Check out the following video tutorial for additional information about customizing the Grade Center:

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See Blackboard's official help page for details about Customizing the Grade Center.  
Contact the Teaching & Learning Center at any time with questions about the Blackboard Grade Center.

In next week's post we'll discuss grading reports and steps for downloading the Grade Center to Excel.  Our Blackboard Users' Group will meet on October 7 & 8.

Grade Center Columns

Adding Columns to the Grade Center

Any item that has points associated with it (assignment, test, discussion board, journal, etc.) in your Blackboard course will automatically generate a column in the Grade Center.  If you are collecting an assignment in the classroom, instead of via Blackboard, you can manually create columns in the Grade Center from the Create Column button at the start of the action bar.  Visit Blackboard's official help page for more information about Grade Columns.

Default/Frozen Columns

There are eight columns that appear by default in the Full Grade Center.  These can be customized (frozen, hidden, moved) within the Manage > Column Organization area of the Grade Center - we'll cover this in more detail in next week's post:

• Last Name/First Name: these are frozen by default, meaning they will always display in place, even as you scroll across the Grade Center (other columns can also be frozen, if you wish)
• Last Access: indicates the last date each student accessed your Blackboard course
• Username/Student ID: both taken from eServices roster; can be hidden if you do not wish to view either or both
• Availability: indicates whether this course is available to each student; can also be hidden if you wish
• Weighted Total/Total: see next section

Total vs. Weighted Total Columns

By default, Blackboard's Grade Center - in the instructor view - includes both a Total column and a Weighted Total column.  The Weighted Total column is used to help you arrive at a final grade if you weight grades.  The Total column is used to arrive at a final grade if you use a points system.  Instructors need to decide which to use and delete the other, so as not to confuse students.  

In the Teaching & Learning Center we recommend using the total column, rather than the weighted column.  It's much less confusing for students, as they can easily understand how their grade is calculated when a Total column is used.  Additionally, grades are always accurate and are not skewed throughout the semester due to category weightings.  Instructional Technologists in the Teaching & Learning Center are available to meet with you to review your weighted grade system and help you convert it to a total points system so that the same weightings still apply.

If you are using a weighted total, you need to ensure that each item in the Grade Center has a category assigned to it so that all calculations will figure correctly.  You also need to ensure that each category has a value assigned within the Weighted Total column and that the categories are appropriately weighted - either equally or proportionally.

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Visit Blackboard's official help page for more about the Grade Center Interface.  Contact the Teaching & Learning Center at any time with questions about the Blackboard Grade Center.

In the following posts this month, we'll cover grading schema, color codes, categories, Smart Views, column organization, and row visibility, as well as grading reports.