The Manage Grades tab enables you to create and edit grade items and grade categories, reorder your grade book, and more.
Navigate to Manage Grades
From the Grades tool, click the Manage Grades tab.
Figure: The Manage Grades tab.
Create a Grade Category
You can create a grade category with a name and description to organize and group related grade items into sections in your grade book.
To create a grade category
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In the Manage Grades tab, click New > Category.
Figure: The Category option on the New menu.
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Enter Grade Category details, including;
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Name (1)
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Short Name that can be displayed in Grade book to save space (2)
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Description (3)
Figure: General grade category properties, including Name, Short Name, and Description.
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Enter Grading Weight and configure distribution settings, including:
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The weight (percentage) that you want the category to contribute to the final grade, with grade items within the category contributing to this weight (1)
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The distribution of how the grade items within the category contribute to the category total. Options include:
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Manually-assigned weight to items in the category.
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Distribute weights by points across all items in the category.
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Distribute weight evenly across all items, with option to drop the highest or lowest grade items from the total calculation. (2)
Figure: The grading Weight and Distribution settings
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Select the Display Options for the grade category.
Figure: Display Options, including Student View options, and whether to show points grade, weighted grade, grade scheme symbol, and color scheme.
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Click Save and Close to return to the Manage Grades page, or click Save and New to create additional grade categories.
Note: For more information, see Set Date Restrictions for Grades and Set Release Conditions for Grades.
Create a Grade Item
You can create a grade item to represent all the work that you want to evaluate users on in a course.
Note: Assessments you created in other areas of Brightspace, such as Content or Assignments, may already appear in Grades.
To create a new grade item
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In Grades in the Manage Grades tab, click New > Item.
Figure: The New drop-down menu with the Item option highlighted.
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Select one of the available Grade Item Types:
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Numeric - Grade learners by assigning a value out of a specified number of points.
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Selectbox - Grade learners by selecting the Grade Scheme level that best matches their achievement.
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Pass/Fail - Grade learners using a simple pass/fail grade scheme.
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Formula - Automatically grade learners using a custom formula based on achievement for other grade items.
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Calculated - Calculate learners' cumulative achievement across multiple grade items.
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Text - Provide comments in Grade book that are not calculated in the final grade.
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Enter Grade Item details, including:
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Name (1)
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Short Name (2)
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Category (3)
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Description (4)
Figure: General grade item properties, including Name, Short Name, Category, and Description.
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Enter the Grading properties for the grade item, including:
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Maximum points (1)
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Weight (percentage) that you want the grade item to contribute to the category or final grade. If a grade item exists within a category, the weight is a percentage of the category, not the final grade. (2)
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Can Exceed indicates if you want to allow a learner's grade to exceed the maximum points specified for the item. (3)
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Bonus indicates if you intend to use bonus items. Bonus items are not included in the maximum points for a category or final grade: they are added on top of the calculated grade. Bonus items cannot make the learner's grade exceed the maximum points specified unless you select the Can Exceed option. (4)
Figure: Grading properties, including Maximum Points, Weight, Can Exceed, and Bonus.
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Select a Grade Scheme (if the default is not the scheme you want to use).
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Add or create a rubric to associate to the grade item.
Figure: The Grade Scheme and Rubrics properties.
Note: For more information, see the articles: Grading Schemes in the Grades tool and Create a Rubric.
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Select the appropriate Display Options, including Student View options, scheme options, and overriding display options.
Figure: The Grade Item display options.
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Click Save and Close or Save and New to create more grade items.
Bulk edit grade items and categories
You can edit multiple grade items and categories.
To bulk edit grade items and categories
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Select the specific items you want by clicking to select the check box beside the item or category name; or click the Select all rows check box at the top of the column.
Figure: The Grade Item table with two grade items selected and the float over text showing the Select all rows button in the top row.
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Click Bulk Edit to open the editing page.
Figure: The Bulk Edit button above the Grade item table.
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In the Edit window, edit any of the following;
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For grade categories: Name, Short Name, and Weight.
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For grade items: Name, Short Name, Max Points, Weight (if the category is not set to be evenly distributed), Bonus, Can Exceed, Grade Scheme, and Category.
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When you have made the appropriate changes, click Save.