Blackboard Grade Center Training

I am going to offer a Grade Center training session on both the Daniel Campus and Christanna Campus for the end of October. The training is for those that have either never used the Grade Center or who need a refresher on how to set up the grade center.

This is open to all full-time and adjunct faculty and would be appropriate for both online and seated course instructors. Remember Blackboard course areas are set-up for ALL courses, not just those online.

This workshop will focus on the following topics/tools. If you would like to attend, please click the link below to view the dates and times and to register.

1. Creating a final grade column (calculated column)
2. Creating columns and entering grades
3. Deleting columns (keeping your grade center cleaned up)
4. Managing your grade center (categories, column organization)
5. Sending Emails through the Grade Center

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=p5OCzAypDL_96xU_szEzWSA

Potential Grade Center Viewing Problem

There is a Grade Center aggravation that has started popping up amongst instructors in the VCCS. This is something that I have experienced myself and wanted to make sure that you were aware.

There seems to be an issue that can be caused by zooming in and out when using Internet Explorer 8. This can apparently cause you to then be unable to view the last row of your students within the full grade center view. You would no longer be able to see the row for your last student. Even if you don't think that you have been using zoom within Internet Explorer, if you are using IE8...you need to double check this. This is not a problem when using Firefox.

An easy check for this is to...

1. Click the yellow triangle at the top of the last name column within the Grade Center. This will put your students in reverse alphabetical order by last name.
   
   
2. Make note of the student now at the top of your grade center.
   
   
3. Click the yellow triangle at the top of the last name column again to put them back in alphabetical order.
   
   
4. Scroll down to view the last row of your grade center. Can you see that last student? (The one that was at the top when you put it in reverse alphabetical order.) If not, then you are experiencing this problem.
   
   If this happens to you, there is a pretty easy fix. While viewing the grade center, hold the "Ctrl" button down on the keyboard and click your + or - symbols to zoom in and out. You may need to do this a couple of times. After trying this, scroll down to the last row of your grade center again and see if you can now see that student. If not, try the zoom in and out again a few times. This should correct the problem.

I know. This sounds crazy, but it works!! : )

The Grade Center and Blackboard

The Grade Center is a great tool that can be used to keep students updated on their progress through a course, but there are many bells and whistles in the Blackboard 8 Grade Center...which also means more things that can go wrong. : )

I just recently became aware of a new gliche in the Grade Center related to weighting grades. If you weight grades and use the "drop lowest grade" feature of this calculated column, it may not actually be dropping the lowest grade. If you utilize this feature, you may want to use the exempt option below instead. This "drop lowest grade" feature does not appear to be reliable, so until Blackboard addresses this issue...don't use it.

The only work around at this point is to exempt individual grades for students. Please see the image to the left. If you have a grade that you would like to exempt from a student's grade calculation, you will need to do the following. (To drop the lowest grade for every student though, you would need to follow this process for each student.)

1. Go to the Grade Center within your course.

2. Go to the cell that contains the score that you would like to exempt from that student's grade.

3. Hover over the cell and then click on the double arrow button that appears.

4. Click on "Exempt Grade"from this menu.

I will let you know if hear that Blackboard has corrected this problem, but I wanted you to be aware of this possible issue.

Don't forget to clean up your grade center and check your grade center for user error issues. We all make mistakes!! : )

• Clean up categories that you are not using (some categories are in by default and can't be removed, but others should be removed). As you course copy from semester to semester, your categories will be duplicated...get rid of the duplicates. Be careful of having both "exam" and "tests" as categories...if you apply the wrong category to a column, this will cause problems if you are weighting grades by category.
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• Go to Manage and Organize Grade Center and check the categories and point totals applied to your assignments throughout the semester. Catch errors before they cause problems.
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• Enroll yourself in your course(s) as a student. Log-in as a students, go to "My Grades" on the course menu, and see what the student sees. Click here for more information on how to do this.
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• Get rid of calculated columns in the grade center that you are not using (Average, Total Points, Weighted Total). If it is a column that can't be removed, modify the column to not display the column in "My Grades". Just because you "hide" a column from your view in the Grade Center does not mean that students can not see it.