Grading is used to provide feedback and evaluate student work. Instructors communicate to students about their performance, where they need more help to achieve the course's goals and highlight progress through grades on assignments and assessments. However, effective feedback and grading is not possible without a well thought-out grading scheme. This page provides information on how to use the Grades Tool and Setup Wizard to ensure your course has a solid grading system in place.
On this page:
Grading Features
Create Your Grade Book: Grades Setup Wizard
The Setup Wizard is the feature that will guide you through the process of setting up your grade book in Brightspace. When you open the Grades tool for the first time, you will see the Setup Wizard page.
Weighted, Points or Formula System
A weighted system will display percentage scores for a grade item based on how much it contributes to the final course grade (e.g., 20.0%).
A points system will display the number of points (e.g., 32 to represent 32/40 on an individual item and overall grade will be the total number of points earned).
A custom formula can also be used to calculate overall grades.
Release Calculated or Adjusted Final Grades
UB Learns will automatically calculate overall grades as grade items are submitted and scored.
Adjusted grades allows instructors to override calculated scores without rescoring individual grade items.
You can choose to automatically release grades to students as soon as submissions are scored, or you can opt out of this and release grades for all students once all scoring is completed.
Note: Depending on your course settings, not all grades may be released at the same. You can choose to withhold publishing grades until a specific time or publish grades at will at the individual graded item level.
Ungraded Items can be Dropped or Treated as 0
If you select drop ungraded items, the grade will be calculated only for those grade items that have been scored.
If you select treat ungraded items as 0, unscored grade items will be included in the calculated score as 0’s.
Treating ungraded items as 0’s will temporarily deflate overall grades until these items are scored. You also have the option to ensure that the final grade is adjusted each time a grade item is scored to allow for a running progress check.
UB automatically imposes letter grades, but there may some cases where instructors want to reflect scores as percentages of points earned or simply pass/fail.
Note: For all schemes other than letter grades, the instructor must convert the resulting final grade to a format that is acceptable in HUB.
This feature allows the instructor to determine how many decimal places students see in the grade book.
Select Student View Display Options
This allows instructors to customize what students can see in the grade book. The options include:
Grade Details
Points Grade This setting determines whether or not the points grade value associated with a grade item is displayed in the student view of grades.
Grade scheme symbol This setting determines whether or not the grade scheme symbol associated with a grade item is displayed in the student view of grades.
Grade scheme color This setting determines whether or not the grade scheme color associated with a grade item is displayed in the student view of grades.
Note: Both the grade scheme symbol and color must be displayed at the same time. You cannot have a grade scheme color showing without having a grade scheme symbol established.
Decimals Displayed This setting controls how many decimals will be displayed to a user grading a course. The value must be an integer between 0 and 5.
Characters Displayed This setting determines how many characters in a Text grade item. The value must be an integer between 0 and 50. If the text item is longer than the characters, the text will be truncated.
Final Grade Calculation This setting determines whether students can see how their final grade was calculated in the student view of Grades.
Review this summary to ensure the grades for your course are configured correctly.
Grade Scheme
The Grade Scheme is how a student’s achievement is represented on individual grade items and holistically for overall performance. This can be represented as a percentage score (e.g., 85.0%), pass/fail, complete/incomplete, as a letter grade (e.g., B) or other such formats. The university uses a standard grade scheme, however you and your department will need to decide the criteria to meet the desired schema. The schema can be allocated to specific items or the course overall if your course, depending on the grade scheme selected.
For more information about fair and equitable grading practices at UB, see Explanation of Grades.
Grades Category
Assessments can be grouped into categories of like requirements. For example, grade items that require submitted written work can be grouped into a Grade Category called Assignments. Discrete quizzes can be grouped into a category called Quizzes. This functionality is helpful when using a weighted grading system. It also allows total weight or points for a grade category to be easily distributed across all grade items in that category. To create grade categories:
On the navbar, click Grades.
Click Manage Grades.
Click New and select Category.
Enter a name and select the appropriate options.
Click Save and Close.
Grade Items
Grade items are activities you are using to measure your students’ progress in your class. These include assignments, quizzes and discussions, as well as those activities that do not require a submission such as attendance, participation, in-class exams, etc.
Grade items can also be created for activities that do not include a submission, such as class attendance, in-class presentations, group discussions, etc. To create assessments that utilize submissions, please visit Creating Activities and Assessments.
UB Learns categorizes grade items by the way that a grade or score is assigned. Grade Item Types represent the six approaches to scoring grade items.
Grade Item Types
Type
Description
Numeric
The score is a point value.
Quizzes and discussions can only be graded numerically.
Selectbox
Allows you to assign students a grade based on achievement level, status or other aspects of their progress, (e.g.; “Excellent,” “Good,” and “Needs Improvement”).
Pass/Fail
Students are either categorized as pass (100%) or fail (0%).
This type of grade item type can be used to calculate the final grade.
Formula
Used to communicate progress across several grade items, such as an overall grade at the mid-term or for individual units.
These grade items cannot be used in the final course grade.
Calculated
Used to communicate progress across several grade items, such as an overall grade at the mid-term or for individual units.
These grade items cannot be used in the final course grade.
Text
Provide comments to students in the grade book.
This type is not used to calculate the final course grade.
Bonus and Can Exceed in Grade Items
At times, you may want to provide extra credit work for students that will add bonus points on top of the points they earn from regular grade items, allowing a grade to exceed 100 percent. You can choose Bonus or Can Exceed when creating or editing grade items.
Bonus grade items add points to a student's grade without changing the maximum points (denominator) in the final calculated grade. Bonus items have a star icon in Manage Grades.