Worksheet: Blackboard Grade Center

Look at your syllabus and jot down some examples:

  1. What does the grading portion of your syllabus look like in terms of graded activities and scoring? What are the individual elements that go into that grading?
    Examples: 5 quizzes worth 5 points each; 3 short essays worth 10 points each; a project with 2 drafts worth 5 points each; a research journal worth 5 points; a final project and presentation together worth 30 points.
  2. If you group some grades together in your course, what are they and how are they grouped? For example, do you do things like group together 6 quizzes so you can drop the lowest grade, then count the remaining 5 as 20% of the grade?

A reminder about the kinds of columns available in the Grade Center:

  • If you have turned on Grading in any Blackboard tool, or used the Test or Survey tools that grade automatically, Blackboard will automatically create a column for that assessment in the Grade Center.
  • For graded work done outside Blackboard, you will need to create manual columns.
  • Calculated columns are used for totals, sub-totals, weighted totals, averages, or min/max calculations.
  • The Category feature is central to how Blackboard groups your grades that will be calculated together for the purpose of weighting, or for dropping lowest grades in that category.