Blackboard 9.1 Grade Center Overview

This tutorial provides you with a brief overview of the Blackboard Grade Center. To get into the Grade Center, select Grade Center from the Control Panel and then Full Grade Center. You’ll notice there are columns in the Grade Center, with a row for each student in the course. You will see that the columns for Last Name and First Name are grayed out. This is because they are frozen in place. You will see a horizontal and vertical scrollbar, depending on the number of columns and rows in the Grade Center. The frozen columns will stay in place as you scroll horizontally. You will see columns that cannot be removed but can be hidden from view, including Username, Student ID, Last Access, and Availability. An icon legend at the bottom will tell you what each icon represents. Near the top of the screen, you will see a series of buttons. While graded items that you created in the course, including assignments and tests, will automatically create a corresponding column in the grade center, you can also create a column for items that might or might not be graded. For instance, you might include a column for participation which is not connected to any one item. The Create Calculated Column button allows you to create a column that takes certain other grade columns and performs calculations on them. For instance, if you use grade weighting, you can create a weighted grade column. The Manage button includes several options for manipulating your Grade Center. One of the most important items in this button is Column Organization. This link takes you to a special view of the Grade Center, where you can reorder columns, show and hide columns, easily assign categories to specific items and more. The Categories link, under the Manage button, will be used if you weight grades by category. Grading Schemas give you the ability to set a range for your grades. For example, 92-100 is an A. You will use schemas if you use letter grades in your Grade Center. The Reports button allows you to create reports from selected data in the Grade Center. This button also provides the Grade History, which shows you a report of grade activity, including names and dates. To the far right, you will see the Work Offline and Filter buttons. The Work Offline button allows you to download your Grade Center as a spreadsheet. You can also work offline and re-upload the worksheet to your Grade Center. The Filter button allows you look at specific items in the Grade Center. You can look at just certain assignments, items that need to be graded, and much more. This concludes the overview of the Grade Center.