Home → TN eCampus Faculty → Brightspace LMS Tools → Grades and the Grade Book
6.37. Grades and the Grade Book
Create a Grade Book
A grade book contains your grading system, grade calculations, grade scheme, grade items, and view and display options. Grade items in your grade book represent all the work that you want to evaluate users on in a course. You can evaluate specific tasks such as assignments, tests, and participation, and you can also create grade items and associate them with course objects such as assignments and quizzes.
A grade book must be created before you can use the Grades tool. TN eCampus courses have a headstart in each Master Course. The Grading System is set to Points. The Grade Scheme is set to Percentage. The Final Grade is set for Manual Release. The grade book still needs further course customization by creating Grade Categories and Grade Items.
*Please note, other changes are possible to the grade book, but the Final Letter Grade should not be altered or removed from any course. This field is crucial to reports sent to campuses.
Create Grade Categories
Gradebook categories enable easy organization of the grade book which enables both students and instructors to easily locate specific grade items. Navigate to the grade book by selecting Grades from the navbar. Choose Category from the New menu.
Use a descriptive Name for the category, such as Assignments, Discussions, Essays, Exams, or Quizzes. As grade items are created, they will be associated with the categories created in this step. Add a Description and check the student view optional. The Short Name feature is discouraged, but if it is used, make it descriptive and consistent with the other names.
Check Distribute points across all items if the points for the grade items to be included in the category vary from other grade items. It is recommended that nothing is marked under Display Options. Choose Save and Close when finished.
*Please note, while the Restrictions tab has options to set Visibility dates and Release Conditions, these options should not be used on Grade Categories or Grade Items.
Create a Grade Item
Choose Item from the New menu to create a grade item. There are several types of grade items to choose from, but the most common is numeric. In this example, we will select Numeric from Choose a Grade Item Type.
Enter a descriptive Name for the grade item. Select the appropriate Category for the grade item from the Category menu. Only categories created will be listed in the Category menu. Categories may be created here, but it is recommended to set them up in advance in the grade book to keep everything logical and consistent.
Add Categories for Grade Items--Update
Categories may be added for text, calculated, and formula grade items. This feature enables faculty to better organize the grade book. This improved organization does not impact the calculation of the category these grade items are in. The totals in these categories do not contribute to the final grade.
If Distributed points across all items is set when the category is created, there will not be an option to change the Maximum Points. Set the appropriate point value in Maximum Points, if not previously set up.
Grade Scheme and Rubric information may be adjusted in this section as well. Select Save and Close when finished. The New Item window will close and return to the grade book with the newly created grade item displayed under the category.
Bulk Edit
You can make edits across selected items using Bulk Edit.
- In a course offering, access the Grades tool
- From Manage Grades, create a few grade items of different types (numeric, text, formula, calculated)
- On the Manage Grades screen, select the checkboxes next to the grade items
- Click the "Bulk Edit" option
- See that the Category column does not have the option to edit in bulk screen. Other items are editable as well.
Brightspace Grades Playlist
Delete a Grade Item or Category
IMPORTANT
The Final Letter Grade - Do Not Remove grade item should NEVER be removed from ANY course. This is where the instructor will enter the final grade for each student and TN eCampus will pull the grade reports to be sent to the campuses from this field.
Navigate from Grades on the navbar to the Manage Grades tab in the grade book. If a grade item is tied to an activity, it must disassociate that activity with the grade item before it can be deleted. The Association column of the grade book will indicate the tool the grade item is associated with if it is linked to an activity.
Select Delete from the More Actions menu.
Mark the checkbox next to the grade item or category to be deleted and select Delete to remove. A Confirmation window will open. Select Delete to finish and return to the manage grades tab.
Manually Entered Grades
Question types with selectable answers may be graded automatically. Written response question types must be graded manually. If you quiz or assessment has a mixture of question types, the final grade cannot be processed without instructor input. To get started choose an item to grade.
Choose the item and the appropriate Attempt.
To support instructors who need to manually score questions within quizzes, the following quiz status and quiz grading workflow updates are available:
- For quizzes that contain questions that need to be manually scored (such as Written Response
questions) AND that have the "Allow attempt to be set as graded immediately upon
completion" option disabled, a new Pending Evaluation status appears beside the quiz attempt
on the Grade Quiz page. - While evaluating a quiz attempt with unevaluated questions, the instructor can now select Pending evaluations in the Question View drop-down menu to filter for only the questions that require manual evaluation.
- Instructors can filter the Users tab by status. The available filters are: Published, Saved as Draft, Pending evaluation, and an empty status. The empty status denotes a quiz with auto-scored questions, where all questions are evaluated and there is no question evaluation pending.
Troubleshoot Final Grades