How to Use Your Blackboard Gradebook

The Online Gradebook in the Blackboard software is one of the most used features. It provides faculty members with an efficient way to post grades so students can see them. It also makes it easy for students to track their progress in a course. One of the nice things about the Blackboard Gradebook is that while instructors can see the grades for all students, each student can see only his/her own grades. This eliminates concerns about grade privacy and posting on the Internet. The Gradebook feature in Blackboard will automatically record the grades for tests and quizzes offered online. Additionally, instructors can add any other grades that they may wish.

In your Blackboard course site:
1. Go to your Control Panel.
2. On the right hand side, near the middle, click on Gradebook.
3. In the upper left, click the button that says "Add Item."
4. Enter the name of the Item, select the category of the item, and assign a point value.
5. Choose how you want the grade to display (Complete/Incomplete, Letter, Percentage, Score or Text).
6. Choose whether to make the Item visible to students. Note: Clicking "Yes" here will allow each student to see his or her own grade for this Item. You would typically click "No" only in special situations.
7. Choose whether to include this Item in the Gradebook score caluclations. Again, you would only want to say "No" in special situations.
8. Click the Submit button at the bottom of the page.
9. You will get a receipt stating that the Item has been added. Click the OK button.
10. You should see the Spreadsheet view, with your newly added Item.
11. Repeat the process as needed.

Once you have your items set up, you will be ready to start entering grades. You can enter your grades in several ways. If you want to enter the grades for one particular Item for all students:
1. Click the column title
2. Click "Item Grade List." This will bring up a page with input boxes for each student.
3. Enter grades for each student in the corresponding input box.
4. Once you are done, click the Submit button at the bottom.

To enter a number of grades for one particular student:
1. Click on the student's name.
2. Click "User Grade List." This will bring up a page with input boxes for each Item.
2. Enter grades for each Item in the corresponding input box.
3. Once you are done, click the Submit button at the bottom.

Finally, you can enter a single grade for a particular student:
1. Click on the "-" in the box corresponding to the grade you want to enter. This will bring up a page with a single box corresponding to the student and Item for which you wish to enter a grade.
2. Enter the grade in the input box.
3. Click the Submit button at the bottom.

Of course, use of the Gradebook by an instructor is only valuable for the students if they know how to access their grades. Students should make use of the My Grades feature:

1. From any course site, students should click the "Tools" button.
2. Click the "My Grades" link.
3. Here, students will see a grade report that includes their grade, the points possible, and the class average for each Item in the Gradebook.

That should be enough to get you started using Blackboard's Gradebook feature. It is a feature that many faculty members find useful. This can also be a way for instructors to generate more traffic to their Blackboard site, as students are always interested in seeing their latest scores.