This guide pertains to Ultra Course View.
If your course is in Original Course View, see the Original Course View tutorial collection.
See Also:
Where Do I Start Grading?
Watch this short video on grading assignments:
You can choose where you want to start grading. From the Blackboard Homepage Grades tab, the courses you are teaching appear and work submitted by students in need of grading is identified. You're also alerted in the Activity Stream on the Bb homepage when student submissions are ready for grading.
Want to see how many items are ready to grade in all your courses? From the Grades tab on the Bb homepage, you have immediate access to all your grading tasks. All your grading tasks are organized by course. for you to quickly scan your progress, set priorities across the board, and even begin grading. No need to navigate to each course to see what's ready for grading. The page only displays information if you need to take action. You see items that are ready to grade or which items are overdue for how many students. In the Activity Stream you are alerted when student submissions are ready for grading. Select the link to go to the Gradebook. Or, select the assignment on the Course Content page to see how many students have made submissions.
Accessing Grading from within the Course
From the Gradebook tab in a course, grading can be initiated through either the Grid or List View.
Grid View of the Gradebook
The Grid View of the Gradebook displays Grade Now in the cell where there is submitted work in need of grading. Simply click on Grade Now to insert the score earned. Grades entered via this method are override grades. The option to view the work submitted appears if a submission exists. The View option is disabled if no submission exists, such as for submissions collected offline.
When Grade Now is clicked, the below menu options appear:
The Grid View also provides these additional filtering options.
List View of the Gradebook
The List View of the Gradebook allows you to grade by either Gradeable Item or by Students:
In the Grading Status column on the Gradable Items tab, submitted work in need of grading is indicated. Please also note the ability to mark attendance from this tab. To launch grading, click on the To Grade indicator to open up the Submissions page, or if a Discussion post to grade, the Grades & Participation page.
From the Student Tab, click on the name of a student to view the work submitted, scores earned thus far on assessments, and to find any submitted work in need of grading. NOTE: This first page view does not provide any indicators that grading is needed. You have to drill further into the student record to determine this. Because of this, launching grading from this tab is less than ideal.
Once a student name is clicked, the student record opens to the Grades tab and displays any work submitted that needs grading in the Status column:
In each graded item's settings panel, you determine how to display the grade to students:
- Letter grade
- Points
- Percentage
The grade pill for each assessment question and graded item may appear in colors or with dark backgrounds.
By default, the grade pills appear in five colors. The five colors represent performance and appear for all roles. The highest score range is green and the lowest is red. You can't customize these colors or the percentages.
The colors map to these percentages in your course and Gradebook:
- > 90% = green
- 89–80% = yellow/green
- 79–70% = yellow
- 69–60% = orange
- 59–50% = red
Grading
- Grading in Ultra
- Submissions page for grading an assessment
- Grading a Discussion
- Grading Actions
- Feedback Panel
Regardless of the path taken to identify student work in need of grading, the Submissions page appears with a list of all enrolled students showing all submissions made by students on one page with the ability to quickly see which attempts are ready to grade. Student profile pictures appear with a red circle when they have late submissions or the due date has passed with no attempt submitted.
The Grade pill without color and no score recorded shows students who have not yet received a score for the assignment. The Grading Status column indicates which student has an attempt in need of grading. Click on the Attempt to Grade to open up the student's work to grade.
If Anonymous Grading is turned on for the assessment, student names are hidden. The submissions list only includes a list of those students who've made a submission. All student information is hidden and student pictures are replaced with the general silhouette.
If Parallel Grading is enabled parallel grading, you'll see when graders have attempts to grade or you have grades to reconcile.
Filter Options on the Submissions Page
Using the filters located near the top of the Submissions page, you can search by student or grading status. If desired, use the Grading Status Filter to display only those submissions that need grading.
Submissions Collected Offline
For submissions collected offline, select a student's name to start the grading process.
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
Downloading Submissions
To accelerate your grading process, you can download students' assessment submissions and view them offline. You can download all or only selected submissions as a single ZIP file. You can download the content and files that students create and attach in the editor for their submissions.
To begin grading, select a student's name to access their individual submissions, and assign grades and provide feedback. Type a numeric value of no more than five digits. You can include two additional digits after a decimal point.
See Bb Annotate: Inline Grading Tool to learn more on using Annotate to grade.
See Grade Using a Rubric to learn more on using a rubric to grade.
See Overall Grade Column to learn how this column provides a running tally on all the items you have graded.
Posting Grades
Ready to post grades? Post appears next to each grade that you haven't released yet. You can choose which grades to post and when. Posted grades appear with a Posted message in the column. You can also grade all submissions for an item in succession and then select Post All Grades to release all grades in one action.
What do students see? After you grade assessments and post the results, students can view their scores on their grades pages or in the Activity Stream from the Bb home page. They can also access an assessment, their submissions, your feedback, and their grades from the Course Content page.
View Submission Timestamp
When you start or review grading, you can review the submission timestamp to view more information. Timestamps appear on students' submission pages and on their attempts panels when you multiple attempts have been allowed for an assessment.
For example, on a student's submission page, you can point to when the student made the submission and when you posted the grade. The timestamp appears in red with a "late" label after the due date passes.
For multiple attempts, on the Submissions page, select a student's name to open the attempts panel. Point to a timestamp to view the additional information.
When grades are posted, students can view them along with any feedback you provided. All feedback for all attempts, even ungraded attempts, shows to students.
Recorded Feedback
You can embed an audio or video recording of your feedback in the editor as you grade attempts. The recording option appears in the feedback editor for most graded items in your course. Students watch or listen to your feedback alongside any text you include.
This feature isn't supported on all browsers. For the best experience, use Chrome or Firefox.