Using Blackboard Grade Center | UIC today
Blackboard Grade Center is a very effective way for instructors to track student performance. The Grade Center is a multi-functional and interactive tool that allows you to access your course list, calculate grades, organize homework documents submitted by students, record the last time each student accessed during class and create rubrics that can be used to aid in grading assignments. In the Grade Center, you can calculate weighted totals; provide and manage student grades for homework, tests, discussion posts, journals, blogs, and wikis; and give feedback to students on homework, tests and exams. You can also create grade columns for any activities or requirements that you want to grade, such as special projects, participation, or attendance. You can also retrieve student submissions from the Grade Center, apply comments, and add attachments for students to view.
Students benefit from the progress of notes or instructor comments and, if necessary, can adjust their learning approach to improve their performance. Frequent instructor feedback increases learners’ sense of engagement in a course. Student contributions increase dramatically when their participation in course activities counts toward their grade, even modestly.
Note Center and Blackboard Banner
If you have already integrated Blackboard Grade Center into your classes this semester, you may need help preparing your Blackboard Grade Book for upload to the Banner system at the end of the fall term. Blackboard’s grade export tool allows grades to be uploaded to an Excel spreadsheet before uploading them to Banner’s grade entry faculty. To use export notes, follow these steps:
Create a scoring scheme
Define the external quality column
- Next, you need to set the External Note column. Usually this is the total column in the grade center, but you can set it to a different column, including the weighted column if you are using weighted grading. To learn more, see this article on adding a total grade column.
- Note: If you have enabled running total, remember that running totals exclude cells that do not contain data. Insert a value of 0 if no note exists. Otherwise, students may have an inflated grade even if they miss homework.
Export notes
Once you’ve exported your grades from Grade Center, visit my.uic.edu and find the middle and final grades. Once there, you will import your Excel sheet into the Banner XE ranking. For help importing your grades into Banner, see Step 3 of Banner XE Faculty Grading.
Getting Started with Blackboard Grade Center to Manage Grades
If you would like to improve your use of the Grade Center in your classes next semester, visit CATE’s page on Managing Grades with Blackboard Grade Center.
If you would like help setting up Blackboard Grade Center, make an appointment with an Instructional Designer to get started.
Visit Teaching.uic.edu for more tips, resources and strategies for online teaching.