Using the Gradebook
All assessments are tracked within the BNC OER+ grade book called Progress. You can view what students are doing and grade from this area as well. Within Courseware there are three different types of assessments that can be graded: Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussions. You must manually grade assignments and discussions and the short answer questions in quizzes. All the other types of questions in quizzes will be graded automatically. You can also add grade columns in the grade book and utilize the grading mechanisms and rubric tool.
To access Progress, click on the dropdown navigation menu within your course and click on Progress.
Settings
There are some settings within the grade book that you can change. To do this, click on the settings icon on the right-hand side of the progress area.
Within this area, you will be able to set your default view as either grades or achievements, set how many students you want automatically loaded into the grade book, set which tab you want to use for your final grade within Activities, set your default letter grade schema, and set-up your categories.
Grades and Grading
Click on the Grades tab to access the grade book.
The grade book includes features such as student list, grades, and a link to student details to name a few. You can also filter the columns and download the grade book.
Within the grade book you will have different types of columns: students, final grade, and assessments. Let’s take a closer look at each type.
Students
- You can sort student list ascending or descending
- You can search for a student
- Student first and last name
- An indicator to alert you that the student is online
- This area allows you to see information on or ways to contact the student
- includes the profile information of the student
- includes the progress information of the student, both grades, achievement, and activities
- you can email the student directly from here
Final Grade
The final grade column allows you to see how the students are doing in the course. There are two things you can do with this column. You can edit or move the column to the end. There are options to show to students or push grades, but these are not available at the present time. Therefore, if you want to move this column to the end of the grade book instead of the beginning, click ‘Show as Last Column’ option. The rest of the configuration for this column is completed under ‘Edit’ option. Let’s take a look.
When you click on edit, you will be directed to the configuration mode for this column. There are three steps to configure the final grade column.
STEP 1
Details is the name and description of the column.
STEP 2
Display Options allows you to set how the students are viewing the column. Since the student currently doesn’t actually see the Progress area, you can set this in the way you want to see the students’ final grade.
- You can make the display name of the column different than the actual name. This is what you will see as the column header within the grade book.
- Since the students don’t see Progress at this point in time you don’t need to worry about hiding this column from students.
- Again, since the students don’t see Progress whatever you choose here is what you will see. If you choose numeric, you need to determine if you want it to be the absolute value or the percentage of the total score. If you choose letter grade, then you will need to set the letter grade scheme, so the system knows what letter grade to display. If you don’t choose either, you will only see if there is a calculation happening.
STEP 3
Once you determine the display options, then you need to set your calculation, so the system knows what it needs to calculate.
Option 1
The first choose is to determine if the calculation is going to be a sum, average or a weighted total.
Option 2
The next choose is to determine if you want to exclude the highest score, lowest score or none. This is good for a calculated column for something like quiz average, and could pertain here if you average all the chapter quizzes and want to drop the lowest.
Option 3
Now you need to decide if you want the calculation to be a running total. Depending on your calculation, a running total may or may not work well. You will always see a running total. This setting is set for the student grade book.
Option 4
Now, you determine your calculation. You will see all the categories and columns you have in your grade book listed. To use a category, you will need to make sure that all the assessments that you want associated to that category to be included within that category. You can go back and edit the assessments if you want them as part of a category. You can also use individual columns. These can be calculated columns, if you want to set up calculations within the grade book instead of using categories.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you choose a category all individual items within that category will not be available to move over. If you move over an individual item, the category it belongs to will not be available to use.
Make sure that you move over all categories or columns you want to use within the calculation. Once you have the calculation done, click on ‘Save.’
Columns in the Grade Book / Assessments
Assessment columns are created automatically when the assessment is authored. These should be in order of the Learning Path, but if you moved the Learning Path around or added something into the path, the grade book should follow that order. We have a manage columns area to make this easy. Under manage columns you can determine what columns you can see when you look at the grade book and what order you want them in. You have the option to search or filter to find columns quickly.
Now that the columns are in the order you want, you have options on what you can do with the columns.
Edit: you can edit the assessment from here.
Hide from Students: as stated earlier, students don’t see Progress, so you don’t need to worry about hiding from students.
Exempt From Grades: if you want to exempt from grades, you can do that right here without editing the assessment. This is good for a quiz you want to drop for everyone.
Publish all: if you graded everyone’s submission, but only saved it without publishing, you can click on publish, so the students will see the grade. If you click on this and only one person needs to be published, it won’t affect the rest of your students. If you have a due date on the assessment, or if it is after the last day of class, you can use this area to give all non-submissions a zero.
Grade all: if you want to grade all the submissions at once, you can click on grade all. This will only bring up the students who needs grading. And you will be able to move through them without leaving the grading screen. As soon as you click on “Save and Next” or “Publish and Next” it will take you automatically to the next student who needs grading.
Let’s look at where you can grade from within the course. In the grade book, there are two ways to do this, you can click on ‘Grade all’ as described above, and all the students who needs graded will come up. If you only need to grade a specific student, you will see a blue “Ungraded” marker in your grade book alerting you that there is something that needs your attention.
To grade, click on the score of the student to grade them individually, or click on ‘Grade All’ As described above. Once there, you will be able to view any files that have been submitted and provide a grade to the student. Once it is graded, make sure you save. If you want the student to see the grade, you will need to click ‘Save and Publish.’
You can also grade all assessments from the Learning Path without going to the Progress area by clicking on ‘Grade This’ next to the student you want to grade. You will only be able to grade one student at a time from the Path.
When you click on ‘Grade This’ the same pop-up window that is available within Progress will appear. When you click on Save or Save and Publish, the window will close and you will be able to go to the next student. Though this is available, it is easier to see what needs to be done from within the Grades tab of Progress.
You can also add a widget to your integrated dashboard to show you what is ungraded.