Grades

What is the Grades Tool?

Use the Grades tool in your course to share grades with students for various assessments, calculate class averages, and provide feedback . You can set up a gradebook that reflects your own approach to evaluation where you can control the grading formula used to calculate grades, how grade items are associated with other tools, when grades are released to users and what information they see.

Accessing the Grades Tool

The Grades tool is one of the links found on the default navigation bar of your CourseLink course site and can be accessed directly from that link.

For Distance Education (DE) courses, the link appears under the drop-down menu of the Tools link on the navigation bar.

Location of the Discussions link on a DE course site

If you are using a custom navigation bar and the Grades link has been removed, you may re-add it. For more information on that process, please see our Navigation Bar page.

Using the Grades Tool

For the most up-to-date information on how to use the Discussions tool, please follow the links below to the Brightspace Help documentation site.

Getting started

GRADE EXEMPTIONS

MANAGING GRADES

View Related Tutorial Videos

When and why should you consider using the Grades tool?

The Grade tool is a great way to collect and organize student grades online. There are many advantages to using the Grade tool including:

GRADING AND ASSESSMENT

Grade items represent the individual assignments, quizzes, performance measurements, etc., that you want to grade users on. Each grade item has its own entry in the grade book, which you assign a grade to for each user. Grade items can be tied to other course objects, such as quizzes or discussion forums, or they can exist independently. Grade items can be graded numerically, based on a grade scheme, or with a simple text message, depending on the grade item type chosen.

ORGANIZING GRADES

Use grade book categories to organize and group related grade items into sections. For example, you could have separate categories for Dropbox Submissions, Quizzes, Case Studies, Participation, Discussions, and so on. When grade items are grouped together in a category, you can distribute points equally across all grade items and drop the highest or lowest item in the group.

IMPORTING AND EXPORTING GRADES

You can enter grades in another application, such as Microsoft Excel, and import them into CourseLink using a CSV or TXT file. You can also create new grade items through an import file by adding a column to the file.

The import file must follow a standard format; use the Grades sample import file as a reference point. We recommend that you set up your grade book in CourseLink even if you want to enter grades in a CSV or TXT file. You can then use the Export Grades option to create an appropriately structured file.

CREATING A GRADE FORMULA

Use the Formula Editor to define a formula that calculates a grade item’s value based on other grade items. When you create a formula, you specify which grade items you want included in the formula and the relationships between them. An example of a simple formula is one that calculates the sum of a number of grade items. A more complicated formula is one that drops the minimum or maximum value from a set of grade items.

The Formula Editor is available on the New Item page and Edit Item page for Formula items, and the Edit Calculated Final Grade page and Edit Adjusted Final Grade page for the Formula grading system.

Formula examples:

Give users who achieved over 85% on all items in the category 100%.
=IF{MIN{[Week1.Percent],[Week2.Percent],[Week3.Percent]}<85,0,100}

Find the best 2 out of 3 grades.
=MAX{[G1.Points Received],[G2.Points Received]} + IF{(MAX[G2.Points Received],[G3.Points Received]} = MAX{[G1.Points Received],[G2.Points Received]}), MAX{G1.Points Received],[G3.Points Received]}, MAX{[G2.Points Received],[G3.Points Received]}}

TRACKING GRADE EVENT LOGS

Event logs maintain a record of changes made to your grade book. The logs can be useful when auditing a grade book, managing teaching assistants, and discussing grades with users.

User Grades Event Log records all of the changes made to a particular user’s grades.
Grade Item Event Log records changes to users’ grades on a single grade item.
Final Grade Event Log records changes to users’ final grades.
Manage Grades Event Log records changes made to the properties or restrictions of a specific grade item.
Restoring Grade Item Event Log records the date and time a grade item is created or removed, and the user who performs the action.