Assign Grades

Where do I start grading?

You can choose where you want to start grading! In the list where your name appears, you have immediate access to all your grading tasks on the global Grades page. In a course, you can access the course gradebook on the navigation bar. You can see who has made submissions and start grading. You're also alerted in the activity stream when student submissions are ready for grading.

This information also applies to organizations.

Want to see how many items are ready to grade in all your courses? In the list where your name appears, you have immediate access to all your grading tasks on the global Grades page. All your grading tasks are organized by course. You can 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.

Want to narrow your focus? In a course, you can access the course gradebook on the navigation bar. You can see who has made submissions and start grading.

From the activity stream, you're alerted when student submissions are ready for grading. Select the link to go to the gradebook. Or, select the item on the Course Content page to see how many students have made submissions.

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Assign, edit, and post grades

You can assign, edit, and post grades from three locations:

1. Submissions list page for an item
2. Student's submission page
3. Cell in student grid view

Submissions list page for an item

In your course gradebook, select an item to begin grading. The submissions list page appears with a list of all enrolled students.

At this time, you can only grade journal submissions from the student grid view. Enhancements to the journal grading workflow are in progress at this time.

If you hid student names for assessments without questions, a message appears stating anonymous grading is in progress. 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.

More on anonymous grading

If you enabled parallel grading, you'll see when graders have attempts to grade or you have grades to reconcile.

More on parallel grading

You can search for a student or a group and select how many items to display on the page. When you search by student, add two or more letters or a first or last name. The system remembers your selection, so if you leave and come back, the setting is retained in the next session. You can select which page to view at the bottom of the screen.

Use the Filter menu to display only those submissions that need grading. At this time, you can filter by All statuses and Needs grading. The Filter menu doesn't appear for group and discussion items.

Keep track of all submissions on one page. 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. For submissions collected offline, select a student's name to start the grading process.

More on collecting submissions offline

Access the details. Review the instructions and settings at any time. For example, select the Content and Settings link to return to the assignment or test page.

View students with accommodations. You can set accommodations for individual students and exempt them from requirements, such as assessment due dates and time limits. Use accommodations to help students progress in the course even though they may have difficulty with some requirements. Icons appear next to the names of students with accommodations.

More on accommodations

Keep up with the conversation. If you allowed conversations about this content, select the Open class conversation icon. Students can discuss the content with you and their classmates. As the conversation develops, it appears only with the relevant item.

A small circle appears with the icon to indicate new activity.

More on conversations

Download 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.

More on downloading submissions

Start grading. Select student names 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. You can also assign grades directly on this page. These grades are override grades. An override label appears next to the grade. After you assign a value, click anywhere outside the grade area to save.

More on override grades

More on multiple attempts

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.

If you chose not to show correct answers for automatically scored questions, return to the assessment settings panel and select the Show correct answers check box.

More on showing correct answers

For manually added items, no submissions exist. You assign grades directly on the submissions list page. After you type a value, click anywhere outside the grade area to save. You can also provide feedback. Manually added items with grades are posted immediately. If you made the item visible to students, they can see their grades.

From a student's submission page, access the menu next to the grade pill to add an exception for an assessment. An exception includes additional attempts or extended access, even if the assessment is hidden from other students. You can also add exceptions after you post grades.

More on assessment exceptions

View submission timestamps

When you start or review grading, you can point to a submission timestamp to view more information. Timestamps appear on students' submission pages and on their attempts panels when you've allowed multiple attempts for an assessment.

For example, on a student's submission page, you can view 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 list page, select a student's name to open the attempts panel. Point to a timestamp to view the additional information.

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Feedback panel

Open an attempt. On the Submission page, select the feedback icon to open the feedback panel. The panel remains in place as you scroll through the assignment and add overall feedback and a grade.

When you post grades, students can view them and any feedback you provided. All feedback for all attempts, even ungraded attempts, shows to students.

More on adding feedback and grades for group assignments

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Insert a feedback recording in the editor

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.

More on adding audio/video feedback

Student's submission page

Open student submissions from the submissions list page in your course gradebook.

Grade, provide feedback, and post. Assign a grade and select the feedback icon to add a note with suggestions, encouragement, and overall feedback about the submission. Access the menu to post the grade or delete the submission. You can also give the student an exception on this assessment. An exception includes additional attempts or extended access, even if the assessment is hidden from other students. If students uploaded files, you can provide annotations directly on the files with Bb Annotate.

If you associated a rubric, the grade pill displays the rubric icon.

More on grading with rubrics

If you included questions in an assessment, you can open a question's menu and select Edit/Regrade to make changes that affect everyone's assessments. You receive a warning after you save your changes if student submissions exist and regrading will occur.

More on editing and regrading questions

Post now or later. You can post grades and feedback for students to see as you grade each submission. Open the menu and select Post. On the submissions list page, Post also appears next to each grade that you haven't released yet. You can choose which grades to post and when.

Reminder: When you post grades, students can view them and any feedback you provided. All feedback for all attempts, even ungraded attempts, shows to students.

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. They can also access an assessment, their submissions, your feedback, and their grades from the Course Content page.

About Bb Annotate

Add grades in student grid view

The student grid displays the scores students have earned. Select a cell to begin grading. These grades are override grades. An override label appears next to the grade in list view.

If more than one student has the same name, names are ordered by student IDs. The profile cards display usernames if allowed by your institution.

Assign and manage grades. New Submission appears in cells when students have submitted work. Click anywhere in a column to access the management functions or assign a grade. Select the cell or grade value to edit an existing grade or add a new entry. After you assign a value, click anywhere outside the grade area to save.

View submissions. If a submission exists, select View in the menu to view the student's work. The View option is disabled if no submission exists, such as for submissions collected offline. We recommend you grade offline submissions from the list view.

Post grades. When you're ready to release grades to students, select the Post option in the column header. All grades you've assigned for this column are posted for students to see. If you want to post one at a time, click within that student's cell and select Post in the menu. Posted grades appear with a Posted message in the column.

Add items or calculations. Select the plus sign wherever you want to add an item or calculation.

View total points. In each column header, you can view the total points for each item or calculation and easily see the grade each student earned.

View your grading progress. In each column header, the number of graded submissions appears, along with the number of grades you've posted. When you've graded and posted all the submissions, Complete appears with a green check mark.

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Assign automatic zeros

In the Gradebook Settings panel, you can choose to automatically assign zeros to missing work past the due date. Students and groups can still submit work after an automatic zero is assigned and you can grade as normal.

Select the Assign automatic zeros for past due work check box.

In new Ultra courses, the automatic zeros setting is enabled by default.

After you enable this setting, you don't have to go through your gradebook to manually assign zeros. The automatic zeros setting applies to these graded items:

• Assignments and group assignments
• Tests and group tests
• Graded individual and group discussions

More on assigning automatic zeros

The automatic zeros setting doesn't apply when you collect submissions offline. As the instructor, you manually create the student attempts and submission dates and times.

More on collecting submissions offline

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Grade pills

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

Your institution can disable the color scheme for all courses. Your institution can't disable or enable colors on a course-by-course basis. In the disabled state, the grade pills appear with dark backgrounds and white grades. Colors won't be used to convey performance.

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Download and upload grades

You can download the full gradebook or select columns from your Ultra courses. You can export the file in a comma-delimited (CSV) or tab-delimited (XLS) format. You choose whether to save the file to your device or the Content Collection.

You can import your downloaded file into an application such as Microsoft ^®Excel^® to do statistical analysis or other ad hoc computational work.

You can also upload a grade file you worked on offline and update your gradebook.

More about working offline with grades