Blackboard Grade Center

The place to manage grades in a Blackboard course.  

What is the Blackboard Grade Center?

The Grade Center in Blackboard Learn provides students their scores or grades on their assignments, and feedback from their instructor. This allows students to see how they performed on one or more assessments in the course, and adjust their approach to the course to improve their grade(s).
Blackboard Grade Center can provide instructors with a complete Gradebook, that accommodates assessments done both inside or outside of the Blackboard system. It organizes grade columns, can calculate totals and weighted totals, and facilitate feedback from instructor to the student.  The Grade Center supports filtered views and reports, based on student or type of assessment, and allows for rubrics on any assessment column.

How Can I Use the Blackboard Grade Center in My Course?

Here are a few examples:

  • Set up a weighted total column in the Grade Center, and create a running total for the course. Students will be able to see their grade after an assessment is completed and graded. This can provide motivation for upcoming assessments in the course.
  • Create short, content-driven quizzes using the test manager in Blackboard. Allow unlimited attempts, and tell your students to check their score in the Grade Center. Encourage them to keep taking the quiz until they receive a perfect score.
  • Add columns manually for assessments done outside of the Blackboard Learn system. This can be for larger projects, presentations or lab assignments. The Grade Center can calculate all the grades together, as the total column reflects all of the graded assignments in the course.
  • Set up color coding in the Grade Center. This can be useful for  highlighting students who are underperforming on assessment, and may need a little extra assistance.
  • Add a rubric to an assignment or column. This sets clear expectations and  can provide detailed feedback to students.
  • Organize your columns in the Grade Center in logical order. Use the ‘My Grades’ tool in the Student Preview feature to check how your columns and Grade Center overall looks to your students.


“How To” Instructions:

Considerations for the Online Classroom

The Grade Center in Blackboard can be a useful tool for you and your students. Students can access the Grade Center frequently and are able to stay on top of their progress in the course.  Do your grades display correctly in the Grade Center? Do your students receive the feedback you are providing?
In addition to using the Grade Center inside of the UA Blackboard Learn system, you can use the Blackboard Grader App on your iOS device. The grader app lets you grade and give feedback — including audio, video, and rubrics — from anywhere.

Research Foundations

Sutton, S., McCoy, S. & Pfaffman, J. (2010). Effective uses for Blackboard: Do students and faculty have a shared vision for how Blackboard should be used to support instruction?  (PDF)  In D. Gibson & B. Dodge (Eds.),  Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2010  (pp. 3361-3366). Chesapeake, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

Watch

A Teaching Tip Live presentation with Heidi Olson on “Classroom Management”

Further Resources