This article contains two sections:

A. Overview of the Grades tool

B. A video that explains key aspects of creating and using your grade book (2:43)

 

 Overview

What are Grades

Grades is a central location for you to store evaluations tied to activities within Brightspace or the classroom. 

You determine the set-up of your gradebook to best reflect your approach to evaluation. Within your gradebook, you will have grade items that you can connect to activities like: 

  • Quizzes 

  • Assignments and 

  • Discussions. 

You can also create grade items that do not connect with any evaluated activities within Brightspace, and instead are activities observed within the classroom. Grades makes it easy to track and view your learners grades by automatically pulling the score and feedback from the activities you evaluate, provided the activity is connected to a grade item. 

Why would I use Grades? 

  • To track attendance and participation: Create independent grade items to evaluate behaviours and interactions in your course. 

  • To organize learners grades: Create grade categories to organize and group related grade items into sections in your grade book.  

  • To view learner performance against learning outcomes: Use outcomes associated to various types of assessments to determine the overall achievements for learners in your course. 

 

Grading systems 

Selecting a grading system is the first step in setting up your grade book. There are 3 grading systems: 

  • Weighted 

  • Points 

  • Formula 

 

Weighted 

The weighted system calculates grade items as a percentage of a final grade worth 100%. The maximum points you assign to individual grade items can be any value, but their contribution towards the category they belong to and the final grade is the percentage value (weight) assigned to them. 

Grade items in a category count as a percentage of that category, not of the final grade. Therefore, grade items in a category should combine to a weight of 100%. 

Example: If you have a category worth 10% of the final grade with two equally weighted grade items, the weight of each grade item is 50%, (its contribution to the category), not 5% (its contribution to the final grade). 

Since it's a category’s weight and not an individual grade item’s weight that counts toward the final grade, the final grade is inaccurate until all the items in the category are graded. If you want to release final grades to users before all the items are graded, you can drop ungraded items from the calculation until the end of the course when you want all grade items to be considered. Otherwise, the final grades might be misleading. 

If your grade items do not add up to 100%, you will receive a warning message. You can ignore this message if you choose; a balanced grade book is not required. If the weights assigned to grade items do not sum to 100%, the tool adjusts the weight of each item. For example, if you have three grade items with a weight of 25% each, each item is actually calculated as 33%. This is true for categories and the final grade. 

Points 

Use the points system when you want the maximum points assigned to a grade item to be equal to its contribution to the final grade. Final grades are calculated by adding a user’s score on all grade items together and dividing by the sum of the maximum points values. The sum of the maximum points values for all grade items does not need to equal 100. 

With the points system you do not specify a category’s weight or total points. It is the maximum points assigned to an individual grade item that counts toward the final grade. 

Make sure the maximum points assigned to grade items reflect how much you want them to be worth. For example, don’t grade each of your 20 homework assignments out of 50 points and then your final exam out of 80 points. 

Another option in the point system is to exclude an item from the final grade calculation. This enables you to evaluate a grade category, numeric grade item, select box grade item, or pass/fail grade item without including the grade in users’ calculated or adjusted final grades. The New/Edit Item page and the New/Edit Category page both include an Exclude from Final Grade Calculation check box. 

You can achieve similar functionality in the weighted system by setting the grade item or category’s weight to 0%. 

Formula 

Use the formula system when you want to calculate final grades using a custom formula that allows for conditions. The formula system is based on the points system, but allows you to set conditions around grade items to determine the final grade. For example, you could require that users receive at least 50% on their midterm and final exam to pass a course. 

The formula system might not be available at your organization. If you do not have this option, you can release the adjusted final grade and calculate your custom formula manually, or you can contact your site administration about getting access to this functionality. 

 Video

This video explains the key aspects of creating and using your grade book (2:43)