BlackBoard Question of the Week

Q. Is there a way to grade assignments anonymously in Blackboard? 

A. You can do this in Blackboard if you use the Assignment Tool to create the assignment. For anonymous grading, each student is assigned a number, such as Student 8, and attempts appear in random order.

Follow these steps to use anonymous grading:

1. In the control panel, under Grade Center, click on Full Grade Center.
2. Click the chevron beside the name of the assignment and select Grade Anonymously.
3. On the Grade Assignment page, grade the first student’s submission, then move to the next student using the Save and Next button in the upper right corner of the window.
4. After you grade the last student’s submission, click the Save and Exit button in the upper right corner.

If you choose Save and Exit before you are finished grading all of your students, when you return to complete grading anonymously, the remainder of the students in the class will have been assigned  new random numbers.

Q. How can I print out the students’ grades and fit them on one page?

 A. There is no good way to do this from within Blackboard. But you can download the Grade Center, open it in Excel and then format in Excel for printing. You can download the entire Grade Center or specific columns, e.g., Total column or whichever column you are using for the final grade. 

For instructions on downloading your Grade Center please visit  Backing Up Grades .

Q. None of my students are showing up in the Grade Center when I click on ‘Full Grade Center.’ They were all there last week and I don’t know why they are not showing up now. Please advise.

 A. When you remove all columns except the few required columns in the Grade Center, students disappear from the Full Grade Center view. If you add a column to your Grade Center, the student names will reappear.  For instructions on adding a column, visit Creating a Grade Center Item.

If you add a column, but don’t intend to use it, you can remove it from students’ view by editing the column information using the chevron beside the column title and selecting “No” for “Include this column in Grade Center calculations” and also for “Show this column to students.” If you want to remove the column from your own view, you can hide it from yourself by clicking on the chevron and selecting “Hide Column.”

Q. I’ve been on the new Blackboard getting ready for my summer class.  In the Grade Center under “Manage” there used to be a way to download and upload to/from Excel.  I don’t see it in this version.   How do I do it?

A. To download or upload your Grade Center, click the “Work Offline” button in the upper right corner of the Grade Center and select Download or Upload.

Q. When I go into the Grade Center to add grades, I double-click in the cell where I want to enter a grade. When the little dash before the grade disappears, the grade doesn’t add into the total and I can’t figure out how to manually make the grade add into the total. Is there a better way for me to be entering grades?

A. You will need to remove the dash when entering grades. The dash is just a place holder until you enter a grade.  If you leave it before the grade it will calculate as a minus and your grade totals will be wrong.

To fix the problem for grades you’ve already entered, click in a cell with the negative grade once to highlight the whole grade, then click again after the dash, then use the backspace button to delete it.  When you are finished,  click outside of the cell where you changed the grade and you will be prompted to click OK to save the change.

Q. I have combined two sections of my History course. I want to be able to separate the sections in the Grade Center. How can I do this?

A. Many instructors combine sections of the same course but wish to maintain separation of each section within the Grade Center. This is possible through two actions: 1) first creating a Blackboard Group for each section (please refer to our online tutorial Creating Student Groups ); and then, 2) creating a Grade Center Smart View for each group.

Let’s say you have combined two sections and have created a Blackboard Group for each section, Group1 and Group 2. You can look at each group individually within the Grade Center by creating two Smart Views, one for each group. To create a Smart View, do the following:

1. In your Grade Center, click on the Manage option.

2. Select Smart Views from the drop-down list.

3. A Smart Views page will open in which you should click on Add Smart View.

4. In the Add Smart View page, give the Smart View a name in the Name box, e.g., Group 1.

5. In the Selection Criteria area, choose “Group” for Type of View; for Select Criteria, make sure your User Criteria is set to “Group,” your Condition is set to “Equal to” and you have highlighted “Group 1″ in the Value field.

6. The Filter results should be set to All Columns (this is the default).

7. Click on Submit.

8. You will be taken back to the Smart View page and you will now see that Group 1 has been created as a Smart View.

9. Follow these same steps to create a Smart View for Group 2 but make sure that the name for this group is unique, e.g., Group 2 and that you highlight Group 2 in the Value field in the Selection Criteria when creating the Smart View for Group 2.

10. When you are back in the Grade Center you will see both Group 1 and Group 2 listing as Smart Views under the dropdown list for Current View. If you select the Smart View Group 1 you will see only the students from the Group 1. Alternatively, if you select the Smart View Group 2 only the students from Group 2 will appear.

Q. I am teaching a course this fall, and I created the Blackboard grade center today, placing the various exams, etc., in columns. However, I am unable to move the Total column to the place I wish, which is the last column.  Any advice for how to do this?

A. To move columns in the grade center, click on Manage > Organize Grade Center. Find the table on the Organize Grade Center page that lists your Total column, and move your mouse to the first (shaded) column in that table — your cursor should turn to a double-headed arrow.

Click and drag the total column up or down and drop it where you want it. Then, you must click the Submit button in the lower right corner to complete the change.

Q. I accidently hid a column in my Blackboard grade center — can you help me make it visible again?

 A. You can unhide a column in Blackboard’s grade center by selecting Organize Grade Center under the Manage button on the grade center toolbar.

For complete instructions, visit this link Unhiding a Grade Center Column .

Q. All of my grades for one student are missing – in fact, her whole row of grades and her name is missing. Can you fix this? 

A. There are two possible solutions if a student’s name and grades are missing from the grade center:

1. If her name is at the end of the alphabet and has been displaying at the end of the list of students, you can try one of these two solutions:

a. Reverse the alpha order twice in the Last Name column and the last row will show – you can do this by clicking on the yellow arrow in the column header.  

OR

b. Change the grade center view from the default “Full Grade Center” to “Preview of My Grades.”

2. It may be that you have inadvertently hidden this student in your grade center. Click on Manage > Show/Hide Users in the grade center. If you see the student’s name grayed out, select it by clicking in the box to the left, and click Show Users; then click Submit.

Q. I have labs, tests and quizzes in Blackboard that are out of order – how can I move the columns in the Grade Center into the order that I want?

A. To permanently reorder your Grade Center columns, follow these steps:

1. In the Grade Center, click on Manage.
2. Choose Organize Grade Center from the drop down menu.
3. Once in the Organize Grade Center page you will see the instructions telling you that you can move grade columns by “dragging” the column to the desired location.
4. Move your columns into the desired locations.
5. Click on Submit. This last step is very important – if you don’t click the Submit button, you will lose the changes.

For more information on the Grade Center, visit this link: Blackboard Grade Center