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Your institution controls which tools are available in the Original Course View. The gradebook is always available to instructors in the Ultra Course View.
Views of the gradebook
The gradebook is populated with students when they're enrolled in your course. You'll see all the coursework that's specific to the course you're in. You can grade coursework, manage items, and post grades.
The Gradable Items list is your default view of the course gradebook. You can view all the coursework you've assigned and your grading progress. You can also access all management functions. You can rearrange items from this view. You can switch to the Students tab to view an overall picture of each student’s engagement.
The student grid shows the scores students have earned. Student names appear in each row and columns display graded items. You can grade and manage items in the grid view.
Automatically created grade items
When you create a gradable item in your course, a gradebook item is created automatically. From the Gradable Items list, you can drag an item to a new location in the list.
If you open attendance from the Course Content page, you can add attendance to your gradebook. You can also add attendance on the main Gradebook page. Select the plus sign wherever you want the attendance row to appear in the list and select Add Attendance.
Manually add grade items
You can add grade items that don't require submissions such as participation. These grade items are also called manual grades, manually created items, or offline items. In your course gradebook, you can add a new item in the Gradable Items list or student grid view.
For manually added items, no submissions exist. You assign scores and feedback on the student list page.
Manually added items don't appear on the Course Content page. The items do appear on students' global and course grade pages.
You can't add files, rubrics, goals, or groups to manually added items. If you want to add these options to assessments without submissions, see the next section: Collect submissions offline.
- Select the plus sign wherever you want to add an item and select Add Item.
- In the panel, type a title. The title has a limit of 255 characters. If you don't add a title, "New Item" and the date appear in the list.
- Optionally, make the item visible to students.
- Provide the details, such as a description and a grade unit. You can choose points, percentage, or letter. Specify the maximum number of points possible. A due date is optional.
- Optionally, add the new item to a category to use when you create calculations.
You can only choose a grade unit that has a grading schema associated with it. For example, you can't use Text as the grade unit until text grading schemas are available in the Ultra Course View. You can change the grade unit even after you start grading.
What do students see?
You can make a manually added item visible to students. They see the item on their global and course grades pages—with or without a grade.
Reminder: Manually added items don't appear on the Course Content page.
When you assign a grade, students are notified in their activity streams.
Collect submissions offline
Manually added items only appear in the gradebook and on students' global and course grade pages. Instead, you can create assessments that appear on the Course Content page but don't require students to upload submissions. You can add instructions, files, a rubric, and goals so students can prepare for the offline work. You can also enable conversations, but you can't add questions or grade anonymously.
Examples of offline work:
- Oral presentations
- Science fair projects
- Acting performances
- Artwork delivered in person
- Face-to-face team building exercises, panel discussions, and debates
Instructors who teach hybrid courses may find this type of assessment most useful. For example, you can use a rubric to grade an in-class presentation as a student presents. No need to take notes or add a score later.
When you create an assessment, you can choose to collect submissions offline. Students are informed they can't submit work online. If you create groups, students can view their group members.
For submissions collected offline, you can't allow multiple attempts, allow a time limit, or use SafeAssign.
More on grading offline submissions
You can add meetings to the attendance feature for grades that require students to be present outside of class. You may ask students to attend a field trip or guest speaker and then mark them present in attendance.
What do students see?
Students can view the assessment alongside other content on the Course Content page and on their global and course grades pages. Students are informed they can't submit work online. They can access other information, such as the instructions and a rubric if you added one. Students can participate in the assessment's conversations if enabled.
Overall grade
In the Gradable Items list or student grid view of the gradebook, you can set up the overall grade. The overall grade is a calculated item that you build to show students a running tally of all the items that you grade and post.
Select Set it up to create a gradebook column for the overall grade. On the page that appears, you can configure how the overall grade is calculated.
Don't want to display the overall grade? Select Hide this message to remove this prompt from your screen. If you change your mind, you can always change this setting in the Gradebook Settings.
From the Gradebook Settings, select Manage overall grade settings.
To get started, choose between Points or Weighted for the Overall Grade Calculation. The course content list changes based on your selection, and you can begin to assign grade points or percentage weights. If you use category weights to calculate the overall grade, you can expand a category to see the graded items included.
Create and manage gradebook categories
Type a point or an overall grade percentage for each item or category in the gradebook to give them more weight in the student's grade. The total for all overall grade percentage fields must equal 100%.
To make items or categories exempt from the overall grade, select the Exempt icon next to the point or overall grade percentage field. The item or category turns gray to indicate that it's not included in the calculation. Select the icon again to include the item or category in the calculation again.
Expand the category to see its items. From here you can:
- Unlink an item from its category. This is useful if you want to exclude an item from a category calculation rule.
- Exclude an item within a category from the overall grade calculation. This removes the item points from the total number of points available in the course
Choose how you want the overall grade to display in Overall Grade Settings. You can display a letter grade, percentage, or points. With the points display option, instructors and students see the overall grade as a fraction. For example, 745/800.
Select Save when you're finished. The Overall Grade column appears in the gradebook next to the student's names so you can quickly see how each student is performing.
Anonymously graded assessments aren't included in calculations until you turn off anonymity.
Overall grade calculation by grade category weights: an example
Here you find the explanation on how the overall grade is calculated by grade category weights in Learn Ultra:
| Possible Score | Category Weight | Score | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assignments | 23 | 25 | 22 |
| Assessments | 20 | 25 | 20 |
| Journals | 20 | 25 | 10 |
| Discussions | 20 | 25 | 14 |
Total point calculation:
Total point formula:
Category possible score = (Total Category Points/ No of items in Category)
Possible grade = (Category score / Category score * Weights) * Category score
= 23/3 -> 7.6666 --> ((7.6667/7.6667) *.25) * 7.6666 = 1.91666
= 25/2 -> 12.5 --> ((12.5/12.5) *.25) *12.5 = 3.125
= 20/2 -> 10 --> ((10/10) *.25) *10 = 2.5
= 20/2 -> 10 --> ((10/10) *.25) *10 = 2.5
Overall possible points (Total points) = 10.04166
Overall grade calculation:
Category score = (Category Points/ No of items in Category)
Overall grade = ((Category Score / Category Total Points * Weight) + (Category Score / Category Total Points * Weight) + (Category Score / Category Total Points * Weight) + (Category Score / Category Total Points * Weight) + (Category Score / Category Total Points * Weight)) * Category Overall Weight
= 22/3 -> 7.33333 --> ((7.33333/7.66666) *.25) --> 0.23913
= 20/2 -> 10 --> ((10/12.5) *.25) --> 0.2
= 10/2 -> 5 --> ((5/10) *.25) --> 0.125
= 14/2 -> 7 --> ((7/10) *.25) --> 0.175
= 0.7391 * 10.04166
=7.42179
Overall grade = 7.4240 out of 10.04166
Overall grade percentage out of 100: (7.4240 /10.04166) * 100 = 73.91%
Overall grade calculation: advanced
Now the Overall Grade supports an advanced calculation. This new calculation gives instructors greater flexibility and supports varied evaluation practices.The instructor may use the 'Set it up' option to configure the Overall Grade.
Image 1. An instructor may select a points, weighted, or advanced calculation for the overall grade
Image 2. An instructor may configure an advanced calculation for overall grade
Override the overall grade
You can override a student's overall grade if their performance or participation doesn't fit the course's grade schema.
To override a grade, select the grade cell in a student's Overall Grade column. Type a new value or select an option. You can override the grade with a grade notation. An override is useful if a student can't complete the course or otherwise doesn't meet requirements for completion. Grade notations can include Incomplete, Withdrawal, and so on. You can create and manage overall grade notations in your Gradebook Settings.
If you want to remove an override, select the student's overall grade cell and select Undo Override. The student's overall grade reverts back to the calculation you set up for your course.
Overall grade and computed grades difference
In Blackboard Learn Ultra, potential minor differences may appear between the computation of the Overall Grade and the total derived from the Add Calculation function, due to each formula's mathematical definition of score weightage.
In some cases, this slight difference, as little as 0.01, may have a significant impact on the computation based on Ultra's grade scheme.
If all score items have the same maximum points, the grade for both calculations will be same as the weightage difference will cancel, and thus, the percentage assigned by the grade scheme will match.
Formulas' details (example for a five score calculation and an equal weight assignment):
Overall Grade Formula:
((Score1 / Total Points * Weight) + (Score2 / Total Points * Weight) + (Score3 / Total Points * Weight) + (Score4 / Total Points * Weight) + (Score5 / Total Points * Weight) ) * Overall Weight
The weightage assigned to each score item is part of a total of 100%. If a particular item has a different maximum point value (e.g. Score5), it will be converted to 100% by dividing it by the maximum score.
Calculated Grade Formula:
(Score1 * Weight) + (Score2 * Weight) + (Score3 * Weight) + (Score4 * Weight) + (Score5 * Weight)
There is no weightage rule applied. The formula just multiplies all scores with their given values and sums the result.
What do students see?
The student and instructor view of the overall grade changes as you create and grade course content you included in the overall grade calculation.
An item's visibility doesn't affect the overall grade. However, students can only see posted grades, so a student's view of the overall grade only includes grades that you've posted. An instructor's view of the overall grade includes all grades, whether or not you've posted them. In some cases, you might see a different overall grade than your students see.
