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Brightspace's grade tool provides you with a central place to view, edit, and assign student grades for your courses. Find information for whether you're just getting started, if you need to edit, and how to review/release final grades.
Follow this order of instructions to ensure your grade book is set up correctly when you enter your grade book for the first time. If your grade book is set up as points-based and you want it to be weight-based, you'd need to go through the Setup Wizard below.
Setup Wizard: The Setup Wizard can be done before or after creating assignments for a class, but it's best practice to do it before students submit work to the class. The Setup Wizard allows for the customization of settings and options for a grade book.
Go to your course and click Students & Grades and then click Grades
If you've never logged into the Gradebook before, you'll be prompted to go through Setup Wizard. If you have accessed the grade book, you'll be able to choose Setup Wizard from the menu directly below the course navigation bar.
Choose your grading system:
Points: if your grade distribution in your syllabus adds up to a point value
Weight: if your grade distribution in your syllabus has weight against different items or groups of items
Final Grade Released
Use a calculated final grade, which is the column students see when they look at their final grades. If you want to change the final grade you have to change the individual assignment/column grades.
If you choose automatically release grades, students would see their final grades, but you can still go in and make adjustments and/or unrelease them at any point. If you are working in an active course and there are grades in the grade book, don't check this box as you are likely making significant changes and don't want to confuse students. Click continue.
Choose to drop ungraded items (anything not graded won't count towards the final grade) so students see a running total of how they are doing in the class, but keep in mind that you want to insert zeros anywhere students haven't submitted work so they can see an accurate grade.
Automatically keep the final grade updated will always populate the most up-to-date score based on what's in the grade book. Click continue.
Choose the default grade scheme (what your students see their grade as):
Percentage is preferred for weighted or points-based grade books.
If you wanted students to see a letter grade and not a number, you could change it to Letter Grade.
Choose the number of decimal points to display (two is usually fine for most people) and click continue
Review the student view options (dictates what students see when they look at their grades) and click continue:
Points grade: shows the points allotted to that grade item in the overall grade book
Weighted grade: shows the percentage allotted to that grade item in the overall grade book
Grade scheme symbol: if a grade scheme symbol is set, this controls the visibility of it
Decimals Displayed: this can be different from the instructor decimals displayed
Characters Displayed: the length of characters to show for text items in the grade book
Final Grade Calculation: shows how the final grade was calculated
On the next page, review the summary of the Setup Wizard and click Finish.
Go back to Grades to see the changes made.
After going through the Setup Wizard your grade book will be adjusted for the appropriate grade system. If you already built assignments, quizzes, discussions, or anything else that's graded, you should see the items for each of those in your grade book if you go to Students & Grades and then click on Grades. Then, in the top left, click on Manage Grades.
If you're using a weighted system, you can assign points and a weight to each individual item in your grade book. You can also group items together and set a weight against them as well. A group of items in the grade book is called a category. Learn how to set them up below:
Creating Categories
Categories are groups of grade items that can be assessed together i.e. all of the discussion posts in the course are worth 20%. The grade items in this case would be the individual discussion responses.
Go to Manage Grades
To set up a category, click on New (top left) and select New Category
Give your category a Name
Depending on which type of grading system you're using, the following settings will differ.
Points system: to give students more than the maximum (i.e. for bonus points), check the Can Exceed option
To create a category, but not use it for the final grade, Check Exclude from Final Grade Calculation box
Distribution (when checked) makes all items in the category to be worth the same amount. Once it's clicked, you can then set the total points per item and then set if you want to drop the highest and lowest items to drop. If you don't turn on Distribution the category will automatically adjust based on the points of the individual items in it.
If you're using a weighted system, assign an overall weight and decide if you want the category grade to exceed the category weight (i.e. bonus points). Then, under distribution, choose between:
Manually assign weight to items in the category: you'd have to go into each grade item and manually set the weight of it. We generally don't recommend this option as it can be tricky.
Distribute weights by points across all items in the category: Brightspace will do the math and distribute percentage points among the grade items based on their individual point value.
Distribute weight evenly across all items (with the option to drop the highest or lowest score/s): all items in the category have the same weight and you have the option to drop grades.
At the top, you can click on Restrictions to hide the column from users, set availabilities, etc.
Click Save and Close
On the Manage Grades window, you should now see the category you just created. It will be in a light gray/blue bar. You can also see the weight or points associated with that column to the right
To add a grade item to your category, you'll need to have an assignment, quiz, discussion, or something else that's tied to a grade item in your grade book.
Go to Manage Grades
Click the name of the item
Scroll down to Category
Select the category. Click Save and Close.
The options below will help if you need to make adjustments or changes in the gradebook.
Edit Individual Grade Items
Go to Manage Grades
Click on the name of the individual item to edit
Change category, restrictions (setting the column visibility for students), adjust other settings, etc.
Click Save and Close
Bulk Edit Grade Items
Go to Manage Grades
Check the boxes to the left of the grade items you want to edit
Scroll to the top of the table with the grade items and select Bulk Edit
On the next screen, edit the Max Points or Weight as well as the Category.
Make your changes and click Save
Brightspace can handle the import/export of the grade book and the bulk export of student submission files for markup on your computer and then re-upload to Brightspace. We recommend exporting your grade book first so you have all of the information in it. Then, make your changes and import them back in.
To Export:
Go to Students & Grades, click on Grades and you'll land on the Enter Grades page
Click the Export button
Go through the Export Options. Make sure that Key Field is Username
Choose whether to Export to CSV or Excel
To Import
Click the Import button
Click Choose File and upload your file. You can also get a sample file here to use as well.
If you added a new grade item in your file while working offline, check the box for Item Creation.
After you upload, you'll be able to see a preview of your file, click Import to actually bring the data in.
For grading Brightspace Assignments, Discussions, or Quizzes, use QuickEval. QuickEval will pull in anything that needs to be graded into one screen for you. From there, you can save your graded items as drafts or decide to publish them.
For entering grades for things that are outside of Brightspace:
In the navigation bar, select Students & Grades, then click Grades.
Click Enter Grades.
Click the down arrow next to the name of the item you want to grade.
Click Enter Grades.
You will get an editable table where you can type grades and feedback.
Make your changes and then click Save and Close.
The instructions below will walk you through how to review and release the overall grade of the course. Watch a video of these instructions.
While in the Gradebook, click Enter Grades.
Click the down arrow icon to the right of the Final Calculated Grade option.
Click Enter Grades.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and ensure you can see all of your students on one page. If you can't, change the view in the bottom right corner from 50 per page to 100 per page.
Use the checkboxes at the left to select an individual or all the students.
Select Release/Unrelease to adjust the release of grades.
Review the last column (Released) for all students to ensure it is checked for released or unchecked for not released.
Brightspace allows you to designate items as extra credit or bonus in the grade book. If a bonus item is in a category, it will add extra points to a specific category (group of items). If an item is on it's own, it will add points to the overall final grade.
Creating a bonus item
Start by creating your bonus item (either an assignment, discussion, quiz, etc if you're expecting students to submit to it) or a grade item if you're manually entering grades)
Once you have your item, go to Manage Grades (from Students & Grades)
Find the item, click the carrot to the right, and click Edit
Scroll down until you see the option for Bonus and check it
Click Save and Close
On the next page, you should now see a gold star to the right of the bonus item
Please note: setting the percentage for bonus items in a weighted grade book can be tricky, please reach out to the DePeters Family Center with any questions.
Bonus items are not included in the maximum points for a category or final grade. They are added on top of the calculated grade.
Bonus items cannot make users' grades exceed the maximum points specified, unless Can Exceed is selected for the category or final grade.
As you build your grade book, you may find the following links/resources helpful.