- Introduction to the Grade Book
- Grade Book Basics
- Grade Book Tabs
- Buttons
- Columns and Rows in Your Grade Book
Introduction to the Grade Book
The Blackboard (Bb) Vista grade book is a complex tool. It offers various features to make grading students easier, but it takes time to understand all the features. In your grade book you will have a list of all members in your class, including TAs and instructors. You can set up columns that will add up all the points across a range of the other columns in the grade book. You can even set up a column that will figure out the appropriate final grade for the student!
For more detailed information, download part of our Bb Vista training manual. The section, Mastering Your Grade Book and Managing Your Course, downloads the PDF that explains the grade book. There is also the online Bb Vista Help feature. When in your grade book, select the Help link at the top of the screen. You will find valuable information to help you set up your grade book.
Grade Book Basics
This information helps you understand what you are looking at when you first open your grade book. You will see all the ways to move about in the grade book.
You can only find the grade book from the Teach tab. Select the Grade Book link in the Instructor Tools menu.
When you first enter the grade book you will see a series of columns and rows, various tabs above the grade book, and buttons along the top of the grade book screen.
Grade Book Tabs
The Grade Book is divided into tabbed areas.
These tabs present different groupings of Grade Book columns, to give you different views of member information:
- Grades tab: displays all default columns and the grade-related columns that you create.
- Members tab: displays some default columns and the non-grade-related columns that you create. This is a perfect place for columns where you can enter information about the members of the class, including group membership, notes about the students, or TAs’ phone numbers.
- View All tab: displays all columns, combining the Grades and the Members tabs in one easy to view place. NOTE: The View All tab is the tab that feeds to the students’ My Grades tool. The order of the columns in View All is the order students see in My Grades.
- Custom View tab: displays all columns and lets you hide columns to create your own grouping of columns.
- SCORM Grades tab: displays some default columns and the columns for gradable SCORM modules. SCORM stands for “Sharable Content Object Reference Model.” The SCORM Grades tab allows you to view grades for gradable SCORM modules in your course. If a SCORM learning object is created, it can be integrated into the Bb Vista grade book. As of this writing, no one at NAU is using this feature.
Buttons
There are various buttons in your grade book. The buttons across the top of the grade book screen include the Create Column, Import from Spreadsheet, and Reorder Columns:
And the Grade Book Options button placed to the right of the screen:
Below the main grade book there are two buttons: Send Mail, which allows you to email students directly from the grade book, and the Export to Spreadsheet, which allows you to save your grade book to your computer in spreadsheet format.
You will learn more about using some of these buttons in these tutorials.
Columns and rows in the grade book
The columns and rows in the grade book display the members of the class, including TAs, Instructors, and Designers. The members of the class display on the rows; the grades and information are the columns.
Each class has three default columns: Last Name, First Name, User ID (unique identifier at NAU). These columns cannot be deleted. The grade book is automatically set to sort by the Last Name column.
Other columns may appear in your grade book. Any graded activities created with Assessments, Assignments or Discussions link to the grade book and automatically create columns.
