Gradebook Setup

The Set­up Wiz­ard guides how grades are cal­cu­lat­ed and dis­played in your course. You will use the Set­up Wiz­ard to choose your grad­ing sys­tem, cal­cu­la­tion options, and how stu­dents will view their grades. These set­tings apply to the entire grade­book and should be in place before cre­at­ing grade cat­e­gories and grade items. Once you fin­ish with Set­up Wiz­ard, you are ready to begin build­ing your grade­book. If you are using a weight­ed grad­ing sys­tem, you will build your grade­book by assign­ing weights to cat­e­gories and items so the total equals 100%. *NOTE: Most cours­es at NIC use a weight­ed grad­ing sys­tem.

Before you begin build­ing your grade­book, use the Grades Set­up Wiz­ard to estab­lish the over­all para­me­ters for your course grade­book, such as how grades are cal­cu­lat­ed, dis­played, and released to stu­dents. The Set­up Wiz­ard involves 7 steps.

  1. Select Start and choose Grad­ing Sys­tem (Weight­ed, Points or For­mu­la): Most cours­es at NIC use a weight­ed grad­ing sys­tem (e.g., course is out of 100%).
  2.  Final Grade Released: Choose Adjust­ed Final Grade. This allows you to adjust final grades if need­ed, and it is the col­umn in the grade­book that is synced with Stu­dent Infor­ma­tion Ser­vices (SIS), which is impor­tant if you are export­ing final grades to SIS direct­ly from Bright­space.
  3.  Grade Cal­cu­la­tions: Choose from one of two options.
  • Drop Ungrad­ed Items: This option exempts stu­dents from any items that are not giv­en a grade. *NOTE: if you choose this option, you will need to enter zeros for incom­plete assess­ments that are count­ed toward the final grade.
  • Treat ungrad­ed items as 0: This option auto­mat­i­cal­ly assigns a zero to any incom­plete assess­ments.
  1. Choose Default Grade Scheme: Select the appro­pri­ate grade scheme (most NIC cours­es use Grade Scale 1).
  2.  Man­ag­ing View Dis­play Options: The default set­ting is 2 dec­i­mal places.
  3. Stu­dent View Dis­play Options: Select the grade details you’d like dis­played to your stu­dents. It’s rec­om­mend­ed to show Points grade, Weight­ed grade and Grade scheme sym­bol and to leave Dis­play final grade cal­cu­la­tion to users unchecked. 
  1.  Grades Set­up Sum­ma­ry: Review your set­tings and select Fin­ish to save. 

Grades Setup Wizard Overview

Watch the fol­low­ing 7:33 minute video to see how the Grades Set­up Wiz­ard works.

When you’re ready to begin adding grade­book items and cat­e­gories to your Bright­space grade­book, a good place to start is with your Course Out­line. The goal is to have your Bright­space grade­book mir­ror the course eval­u­a­tion struc­ture you’ve post­ed in your Course Out­line. Fol­low the steps below to begin adding grade items and cat­e­gories to your grade­book.

  1. Nav­i­gate to Progress > Grades > Man­age Grades.
  2. Cre­ate a new grade item or cat­e­go­ry by click­ing on New > Item (or Cat­e­go­ry)
  1. Give your new grade item both a long name and a short name. (*NOTE: the short name comes in handy when view­ing grades in Spread­sheet View as there is a lim­it­ed amount of space in each cell)
  2. Next, add the points and the weight. (*NOTE: for grade cat­e­gories you will only assign the weight. For grade items, num­ber of points can dif­fer from the weight. For exam­ple, if you have a quiz out of 20 points that counts towards 5% of your stu­dents’ final grade, the points would be 20 but the weight would be 5)
  3. Select Per­cent­age from the Grade Scheme drop down menu (this is what the stu­den­t’s will see when they view their grades — if you leave it as NIC GRADE SCALE 1, stu­dents will only see their let­ter grade. 
  4. Add an exist­ing rubric if you have one or cre­ate a new one using the Rubrics tool. 
  5. Select your Dis­play Options for both the Stu­dent View and the Man­ag­ing View. It’s rec­om­mend­ed that you show stu­dents their Points grade, Weight­ed grade and the Grade scheme sym­bol.
  6. Click Save and Close if you’re fin­ished or Save and New if you need to cre­ate more grade items.

*NOTE: The ‘Final Cal­cu­lat­ed Grade’ must sum to 100%. If the sum is over or under 100%, you will notice an error flagged near the top of the screen. 

How to Set Up a Weighted Grade Book

Watch the fol­low­ing 12:15 minute video to see how to set up a weight­ed grade book.

Course Builder Navigation

Grade Categories

Grade Cat­e­gories allow you to orga­nize relat­ed grade items. This is impor­tant in weight­ed grade books, as you can decide what per­cent­age of the final grade cat­e­gories are worth (e.g., quizzes may be worth 20% of the final grade). You have the option to dis­trib­ute the weights of the grade items with­in the cat­e­go­ry in one of three ways: man­u­al­ly, by points or even­ly; how­ev­er, the total sum of the cat­e­go­ry must total 100%. You can also choose to drop items based on points scor­ing the high­est or low­est in that cat­e­go­ry.

Grade Items

Grade Items rep­re­sent all the work that you want to eval­u­ate in a course. These can be learn­ing activ­i­ties like quizzes, dis­cus­sions and assign­ments, or they can be offline items like pre­sen­ta­tions. Each activ­i­ty has a sep­a­rate grade item (e.g., Quiz 1, Quiz 2, etc.). You have a choice of 6 types of grade items to cre­ate (Numer­ic, Select box, Pass/Fail, For­mu­la, Cal­cu­lat­ed and Text). Most of the time you will select ‘Numer­ic’. Open the accor­dion below to read more about grade item types.

Now that your grade book is set up, you can begin cre­at­ing grade items. There are six types of grade items avail­able in Bright­space.

  1. Text: Pro­vide com­ments in the grade book. Text com­ments are not cal­cu­lat­ed in the final grade.

    Exam­ple: Write anec­do­tal notes about learn­ers (e.g., “Has not com­plet­ed course eval­u­a­tion”). Count­ed in the Final Grade? No
  2. Numer­ic: Grade learn­ers by assign­ing a points val­ue.

    Exam­ple: A quiz that is scored out of ten (e.g., 7/10). Count­ed in the Final Grade? Yes.

    Note: All quizzes and dis­cus­sions must be grad­ed with a numer­ic grade item. Assign­ments can use a numer­ic or select box grade item.
  3. Select Box: Grade learn­ers by select­ing a grade scheme lev­el that best reflects their work.

    Exam­ple: Learn­ers are grad­ed on over­all course par­tic­i­pa­tion with “Excel­lent”, “Good” or “Sat­is­fac­to­ry”. Count­ed in the Final Grade? Yes.

    Note: You must have a grade scheme cre­at­ed with assigned val­ue per­cent­ages to use this grade item type. You can only use this grade item type for Assign­ments.
  4.  Pass/Fail: Grade users as “pass” (>50%) or “fail” (<49%).

    Exam­ple: An in-per­son case study or place­ment is scored as pass or fail based on obser­va­tions. Count­ed in the Final Grade? Yes.
  5. For­mu­la: Uses a cus­tom for­mu­la to grade users based on their achieve­ment on oth­er grade items.

    Exam­ple: If learn­ers achieve 60% or greater on a quiz, they will receive full marks. If they receive less than 60%, they will receive zero marks. This would be writ­ten as: IF{[Quiz.Percent] >=60, 100, 0}.Counted in the Final Grade? Not unless you are using a for­mu­la grad­ing sys­tem.
  6. Cal­cu­lat­ed: Cal­cu­late cumu­la­tive grades across sev­er­al grade items.

    Exam­ple: Deter­mine grade mile­stones, like a midterm progress update.Counted in the Final Grade? No.

Link­ing grade items to assess­ments ensures that grades entered on an assign­ment, quiz, or dis­cus­sion are auto­mat­i­cal­ly trans­ferred to the grade­book. When you asso­ciate a grade item with an assess­ment, Bright­space con­nects the activ­i­ty direct­ly to the appro­pri­ate col­umn in Enter Grades, reduc­ing man­u­al entry and min­i­miz­ing errors. This also keeps your grade­book orga­nized and ensures the item set­tings (such as points and weight) align with how the assess­ment is grad­ed. To link a grade item to an assess­ment, you must first cre­ate the assess­ment (e.g., Assign­ment, Quiz, or Dis­cus­sion).

Connecting Assessments to Grade Items

Watch the video below to learn how you can asso­ciate a grade item with and assess­ment.

Learn More