Add Category
Categories in the Grades tool allow you to create headings to help organize your gradebook items and group them together. When using a weighted grade system you must use categories to identify each weighted area.
- Go to Grades and select the Manage Grades tab
- Click the button for New and select Category
- Add the name, weight (if using weighted system), and assign any other settings as needed
- Click Save and Close if only adding the one category or Save and New to add another category
For more information on dropping the lowest or highest item in a category see: Drop Grades in a Category
Add Grade Item
Once you have your Categories set up if you have any gradebook items that are not associated with Gradable Activities you can add them manually to the gradebook. This would include items similar to attendance, text grades, or calculated grade for midterms.
Any grade items that need to be associated to Gradable Activities should be added when creating the Gradable Activity. This would include: Assignments, Quizzes and Discussions. Additionally any external learning tools that are connected to the gradebook would have their gradebook items created with the external learning tool.
- Go to Grades and select the Manage Grades tab
- Click the button for New and select Item
- Choose the Grade item type
- Numeric: Numerical grade will be part of the calculated grade
- Selectbox: This will allow you to use the HVC grade scheme to have a letter grade (A, B, C, D, F) assigned to an item. It will auto associate points according to highest possible grade for that letter and calculate into the grade.
- Pass/Fail: This will allow you to use a select of Pass/Fail on a grade item. It will auto associate either 0 or full points for the item and calculate those points into the grade.
- Formula: Schedule a Gradebook training session on use of Formula grades
- Calculated: Use to select multiple grade items and calculate a cumulative grade. This can be useful for determining non-weighted grades for a midterm grade
- Text: Use to provide a comment or simple text to students. This is useful for providing the full range of final grades in the gradebook. Note: Grade Scheme Symbol must be set to on for a text grade to display to students
- On the next screen you will enter the Properties for the Gradebook item. These will vary some depending on the item type.
- Name: Name that will display on Manage Grades page and to students
- Short Name: If entered this name that will display on the Enter Grades page
- Category: Assign to the correct category for the item
Note: For Bonus or text grades these do not need to be associated to a category
- Max Points
- Weight: Used if you are not auto distributing weight in a category
- Can Exceed: Turn on if the item should allow for students to have more points given than the Max Points
- Bonus: Turn on if item should be a bonus
- Grade Scheme: Default will be what you set in Gradebook settings
- Rubric: If using a Rubric for the item you can select it here
- Display Options: Only adjust if this should differ from your gradebook settings
- Click Save and Close
Using Bulk Edit
Once you have all of your items in the gradebook you may have an error showing at the top of your gradebook
Example: 'Final Calculated Grade' sums to 110%, not 100%. Verify the total weight of all top level categories and items is 100%.
This typically indicates that either a category needs adjusting or an item is not associated with a category. To see all of your items and make edits to adjust the gradebook the Bulk Edit tool can be helpful.
- To use select the items (or select all items) that need editing
- Click Bulk Edit
- This will open a new page where you can adjust the following
- Name: Name that will display on Manage Grades page and to students
- Short Name: If entered this name that will display on the Enter Grades page
- Max Points
- Weight: Adjust the weight by category or item. If the weight is unable to be changed on an item this means the weight distribution is managed by the category.
- Bonus: Turn on if item should be a bonus
- Can Exceed: Turn on if the item should allow for students to have more points given than the Max Points
- Item Grade Scheme
- Category: Change or assign an item to a category
- Once you've made adjustments click Save
More Actions
On the Manage Grades page under more actions you are able to complete a few different actions
Reorder
- Use this to change the order that Grade items and category's display on Manage Grades, Enter Grades and on the Student Gradepage
- Reorder will give you a page of all items and a drop down numbers. Changing one will auto change the numbers for all other items. For large gradebooks you may want to reorder categories first, save and then go back in for adjusting items.
View Event Log
- This will show the order of items being created or removed from the gradebook
Make Visible to Users
Hide From Users
- For these 2 items, first select the gradebook items you want to either make visible or to hide and then click the appropriate action
Delete
- Selecting this will give a list of all items in the gradebook
- Select the non-associated items to delete them from the gradebook.
- For any items that are associated to a gradable activity first remove the association and then delete the gradebook item