Using the Blackboard Gradebook

Introduction

Blackboard is a course management platform that allows instructors to interact with students and put their classes on the Internet without having to be experts in HTML or web development. From putting up copies of handouts and presentations to quizzing students on what they’ve learned to calculating student grades and putting them online, Blackboard lets you easily create an electronic companion to your course. This tutorial will assist you in using the gradebook.

Adding Gradebook Items (Assignments, Tests, etc.)

Before you can enter grades, you need to enter in the items you will be grading. Here’s how to do so:

1. Start by going into your control panel and clicking on the link for ‘Online Gradebook.
2. Next, click on “Spreadsheet View,” as this is the view you need to use when adding items.
3. Now click on “Add Item” to get to the “Add Gradebook Item” form, which looks like this:




4. Fill out the “Add Gradebook Item” form, giving your item a name, a type, and a value for “points possible.”
5. Choose whether or not you wish an item to be visible to users (if you’re setting up a class early in the semester, you may wish to temporarily make items invisible), and then click on ‘Submit’ when you’re done.

Please note that you must enter in a numeric value for points possible, which can be used to calculate grades on the assignment and for the semester. But if you wish to use letter-grades, you can enter in a value of zero, here, and then enter in those letter grades when the time comes.

Entering Grades

Now that you’ve created a gradebook item, you can start entering in grades. You can do so in one of three ways:

• In Spreadsheet mode, you can either click on the dashes in the grade column for each student to enter in grades one at a time, or you can click on the name of the item, at the top of the column, to enter in grades for the entire class:





• Back in the “Online Gradebook” screen, you can click “Report by User” to get a search box that will let you find specific users in the class. You can either search for a name, or part of a name, or you can leave the search box blank and click “Search” to get a complete list of students enrolled in the class. Clicking “Grades” in the right-hand column of the row that starts with a student’s name will give you a list of all items you can enter in for that student. Once you’ve entered in the grades you wish to enter, scroll down to the bottom of the screen, and click ‘Submit.’


• On the “Online Gradebook” screen, you can click on “Report by Item.” This will let you search for items or do a blank search to have them all listed, just as you would for students in step 2. Clicking “Grades” in the right-hand column of the row that starts with an item’s name will give you a list of all students for whom you can enter in a grade for that assignment. Once you’ve entered in the grades you wish to enter, scroll down to the bottom of the screen, and click ‘Submit.’

Adding Gradebook Items (Assignments, Tests, etc.)

Finally, when you’re done entering grades, you may wish to export your gradebook to Microsoft Excel. To do so, simply click on “Export Gradebook” on the “Online Gradebook” screen, and it will create a comma-delimited file for you. On the resulting screen, click on “Save Exported Gradebook” to save the file to your local hard disk.