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Returning grades to students in Blackboard

It is possible to return grades to students, in a secure manner, using the Grade Centre on Blackboard. Students will only have access to their own grades; it is not possible for them to see the grades for other students in the class.

Adding your grades to the Grade Centre

1. Log into your Blackboard and go to the course where you want to return grades. In the Control Panel, click on Grade Centre, and then Full Grade Centre.




2. In the Full Grade Centre, you will see a list of all your students, their student numbers, the last access date, and a number of columns representing assignments and/or running totals. If you have used the Blackboard course for assignment submission, there will be a column for each assignment you created.


        

3. To return grades to students, first create a new column where you will enter the grades. Click the Create Column button at the top left of the screen.
   




4. The Create Grade Column screen will appear. Enter a Column Name (required); use a name that will be meaningful for the students. You may also enter a Display Name, which will appear at the top of the column in the Grade Centre. The Display name can be shorter, to fit in the column width, but should be meaningful to you.
   




5. Select your Primary Display type: if you are returning numeric marks, use Score. If you are returning letter grades, use Text or Letter.
   





The Primary Display is how the student will see his/her result. If you want to record numeric grades in the Grade Centre, but only display letter grades to students, select Score as the Secondary Display.*

6. Enter the Points Possible (usually 100). This is a required field.
   





7. You don’t need to enter any of the Dates fields.
   
8. Under Options, the following settings are recommended:






Include the Column in Grade Centre Calculations 
If you are just returning grades to students, you don’t need to use the results in any further calculations – this is a more advanced feature of the Grade Centre.

Show this Column to Students
Initially, until you have completed and checked the input of the grades, you don’t want to show the results to students. This option can be edited once you are happy that all grades have been entered correctly.

Show Statistics (average and median) for this column to Students in My Grades
Show Statistics means that, as well as seeing their own result, students will also see the average and mean result for the class.

9. When you are finished, click Submit at the bottom right of the screen.
   


 

10. A new column will appear at the far right of the grade centre. You may need to use the scroll bar across the bottom of the grade window to make the column visible.






The symbol with the little pink line indicates that the column is NOT visible to students.



11. Enter your grades for each student by clicking on the corresponding cell in the column for each student and typing the result. Hit Enter to commit the grade.





12. When you are finished and satisfied that all the grades are correct, you can make the grades visible to students by clicking on the little chevron at the top of the column and selecting Show/Hide to Users.





The little symbol with the pink line should disappear, indicating that students can now see their grades.

What the student sees

When a student in your course logs on to Blackboard and clicks on the course name, they can access grades through the My Grades menu item. 

Students will see a row for each Grade Centre column that has not been made invisible to users. In particular, the column added in the instructions above is now visible and the student can see their own grade.
 

   

Students will only have access to their own grades; it is not possible for them to see the grades for other students in the class.

Further Information

For further assistance please refer to the CELT website http://www.nuigalway.ie/blackboard  or email blackboardnuigalway.ie

* The letter grade conversion is not standard across Schools, so the default conversion may not be suitable for your needs. In this case you can define your own conversion using Manage >> Grading Schemas, from the Grade Centre.