Oncourse Gradebook: Overview

What it does

Gradebook is a tool for instructors to calculate and store grade information and distribute it to students online.

Key concepts

Features: Using Gradebook, instructors can:

• Choose to enter grades as points, percentages, or non-calculating grades

  Note: Letter grades in Gradebook are referred to as non-calculating grades. Non-calculating grades may be any string of text up to eight characters. If you want your grades calculated automatically, you must enter them as either points or percentages. See Changing the grade entry, type, and scale in Gradebook.

• Autocalculate course grades using point- or percentage-based grading
  
  
• Create categories to organize items and allow for weighting of grades
  
  
• Assign extra credit or assess grade penalties with adjustment items and adjustment categories
  
  
• Drop a specified number of lowest and/or highest scores from a category, or choose to keep only a specified number of highest scores from a category
  
  
• Export and import settings from one course to another
  
  
• Enter, view, edit, and release to students their scores and grades
  
  
• Transmit scores to the Gradebook from tools such as Assignments, Forums, and Tests & Surveys
  
  
• Export scores and grades to Microsoft Excel (in .csv format)
  
  
• Import assignment scores from spreadsheet files (in .csv format)

Viewing scores: Gradebook lets students view their own scores and grades once instructors have released them.

Things to consider

• Instructors can view information in the Gradebook in different ways, including an item summary for each course, item detail, all grade listing, course grade listing, gradebook setup, and course grade options.
  
  
• Instructors can choose to selectively release scores to students for individual items and the course grade (cumulative score).
  
  
• Students can view their cumulative scores for all items, once an instructor releases them; view their course grades, once an instructor releases them; and sort items by title, due date, grade, and weight, where applicable. Students cannot see any scores but their own.
  
  
• Students who do not submit assignments do not automatically receive a score of zero unless the instructor uses the "Calculate Course Grades" feature described in Calculating and exporting course grades from the Gradebook. For the course grade to accurately reflect the impact of unsubmitted assignments, instructors need to either use this feature or manually enter the score of zero for each assignment. See Course grade calculations.

Help documentation

For help documentation about the Gradebook tool, see Gradebook.