Blackboard – Grading Groups for Large Enrollment Classes

If you have a large enrollment class where you’re dividing the grading up amongst more than one TA, you can create behind-the-scenes grading groups so each TA can easily see only the students they are responsible for.

1. In your course, go to Users and Groups in the Control Panel
2. Click “Create” and choose “Random Enroll” from the right “Group Set” column
3. On this page there are a number of settings:
   1. Enter a general name like “Grading Group” (Blackboard will automatically assign numbers)
   2. Where it says “Group is visible to students” click NO
   3. Further down, UN-check all the tools under Tool Availability
   4. Un-check “Allow Personalization”
   5. Under Membership, check “Number of Groups” and enter the number of grading groups you want (the entry field is just to the right, hard to see!)
   6. Click Submit

Back on the main Groups page:

1. You’ll see the Grading groups listed on the main Groups page, and you can confirm that they have “No” in both the Self-Enroll and Available columns. You can click the action button next to the name on any group and scroll down to see the membership. (This is where you can click “Add Users” or delete someone by clicking “x” to the right of that student’s name)
2. Now you change the name of each group so that it contains only each TA’s first name, e.g., “Andrea” (but not “Andrea’s Group” because the word Group will be added in a later step by Blackboard). Use no special characters or apostrophes.
3. Rename all groups so that each TA has a group
4. After they are renamed, on the group management page, now put a checkmark next to all of your TA groups, click “Bulk Actions,” and choose “Create a Smart View for Group”

The final Step is to list the grading groups under Full Grade Center

1. Go to the Full Grade Center, click “Manage,” and choose Smart Views
2. You will see your TAs’ groups and you probably at least a couple of other Smart Views listed, as well. You notice that the column on the far right is labeled “Favorites” and next to “Tests” and “Assignments” you’ll see that the star in the Favorites column is GREEN. Click the green stars for those two smart views so they are not green. Then, click the stars next to the all the TAs’ groups so they are green.
3. When all the TA groups have green stars, click “OK” at the bottom right. Now you will see them listed under Full Grade Center on the Control Panel. TA’s can just click on their own names to see only the students they are responsible for.