Weighting Grades in Blackboard

By weighting grades in your Blackboard course, you’re allowing students to know what their standing grade is in a particular class. When an instructor weighs grades based on a category, the standing grade computes all tests, exams, quizzes and assignments, and then displays the students standing grade based on percentages allocated to each category.

1. Enter the Blackboard course in which you’d like to add a Weighted Total column.

2. At the bottom of the left-hand menu in your course, go to the Control Panel > Full Grade Center.

3. If you don’t already have a Weighted Total column in your grade center, hover over Create Calculated Column and click Weighted Column from the drop-down menu.

4. If you already have a Weighted Column in your grade center, click on the gray chevron (down-facing arrow) in the column heading and select Edit Column Information from the drop-menu.

*Steps 3 and 4 will direct you to the same page.

Note: You may have several weighted columns and total columns already, especially if you have copied the course repeatedly. You only need one – Delete the extra weighted total and total columns.

5. On the Create Weighted Column page, complete the Column Information by providing a Column Name and optional description.

6. Make a selection from the Primary Display drop-down menu. The selection that you choose (Percentage is most commonly used) will be the grade format shown in the Grade Center and to students on their My Grades page. If you created custom grading schemas, they appear in the list in addition to the five default options available. There are five default options to choose from:

• Score: A numeric grade is the default setting. If you don't make a selection, the score appears in the gradebook.
• Letter: A letter grade appears. The default grading schema is used to assign letter grades. For example, a score of 21/30 equals 70% and appears as a C.
• Text: Text appears in the column when you create and associate a text grading schema. Examples of text values include: Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, and Poor OR Satisfactory and Unsatisfactory. If no text grading schema exists, and you select the Text option, you can type text in the column's cells. Limit your text to 32 characters. If you choose to share the column results with students in My Grades, they see the text values for their grades.

*You can convert a numeric score to text. But, if you don't create a custom text grading schema, and return to numeric scoring, values that can't be converted display a zero after conversion. If you want to include text as grades, we recommend that you create a text grading schema and associate it with the appropriate columns.

• Percentage: A percentage appears. For example, a score of 21/30 appears as 70%.
• Complete/Incomplete: When a student submits an item, a Completed icon appears in the column regardless of the score achieved.

7. Optionally, make a selection from the Secondary Display drop-down menu. The default setting is None. When you choose a secondary display, the secondary value appears in parentheses in the Grade Center column. The secondary value doesn't appear to students.

8. Scroll down to the Select Columns section. In the Columns to Select box, click a column title to select it. To highlight more than one item, continuously hold the ctrl key while selecting each individual item.

9. Click the right-pointing arrow to move columns into the Selected Columns box.

10. In the Selected Columns box, enter the weight percentage for each item in the text boxes.

To remove any unwanted items, click the red X icon.

11. Repeat steps 8 – 10 for the Categories to Select box to include certain categories in this weighted grade.

*See the tutorial on Assigning A Category to Blackboard Assignment/Items to apply a category to an assignment.

12. For the Calculate as Running Total option, click the corresponding “Yes” or “No” node based on your personal preference. Running totals will exempt any cells that do not contain data.

13. In the Options section, click the corresponding “Yes” or “No” nodes based on your personal preference.

 14.Click Submit.