This information explains the many options in viewing and manipulating the columns in your grade book. From reordering to renaming, you can set up your columns for ease of use. 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.
Column Settings
Many of the tasks involved in editing columns in your grade book require that you use the Column Settings. You can release grades, edit the number of decimal places in points, rename columns, delete columns that are not linked to any graded activities, and even convert the column type.
- To access Column Settings in your grade book, select the Grade Book Options button
- Select Column Settings, and click your mouse button.
- You now have access to various editing features in your grade book.
Freezing Columns
The default setting to view the columns in the grade book is to freeze the columns. This locks the Last Name and First Name columns in the same position and allows you to keep track of class members when scrolling horizontally to view other grade book columns. It also sets the column width to a certain size. In many cases, the labels of the column will not fully show unless you place your mouse cursor over the column label. If you choose to unfreeze the columns the column labels will fully show.
You can choose whether or not you want the Last Name and First Name columns in all Grade Book tabs to be frozen.
- From any of the Grade Book tabs, select the Grade Book Options button.
- Select Freeze Columns or Unfreeze Columns.
- To return to your previous setting, repeat the same steps and select the current option of Freeze Columns or Unfreeze Columns.
Sorting Columns
If a column title is underlined, you can sort members of the grade book by that column. An arrow appears next to the column title by which members are currently sorted.
An arrow pointing up indicates members are sorted in ascending order (1 to 10, A to Z); an arrow pointing down indicates members are sorted in descending order (10 to 1, Z to A).
Select the action links icon for the column you want to sort by. Select Sort Column.
If grade book members were not previously sorted by this column, they are now sorted in ascending order. If members were previously sorted by this column, they are now sorted in the reverse order. You can sort by any column.
Reordering Columns
You can determine the left-to-right order in which columns display in each of the grade book tabs (see Tabs). The order of columns is unique to each tab: you can have the Last Name column appear left-most in the Grades tab and have it as the third column in the Members tab.
- From any of the grade book tabs, select Reorder Columns.
- Each column that is currently in the tab you started from appears in a list. The top-most column in this list is the left-most column in the tab.
- Select each column you want to move. In this example we will move the Quiz 1 column above the Unit 2 Quiz. The check box for Quiz 1 is selected.
- Do one of the following:
- To move the selected columns to the left of a column, under Move, select the appropriate Insert Selected Items Above icon. As we want to move the Quiz 1 column before the Unit 2 Quiz column, we select the icon next to Unit 2 Quiz.
- To move the selected columns to the right of the right-most column in the tab, at the bottom of the list, under Move, select the Insert Selected Items at Bottom of List icon.
- Select Save. Do not forget this step. With a long list of columns you can easily overlook the Save button at the bottom of the page.
NOTE: The order of the grades that the students see in the My Grades tool is based on the order of the columns in the View All tab.
Hiding Columns
You can hide any columns in your grade book. Hiding will only affect what you see in the grade book. A grade book column that is released to students will still appear in the My Grades tool when hidden in the grade book. To remove columns from My Grades you will need to set them to not release. The instructions for releasing grades are here. (link to releasing section).
- To hide any columns select the Reorder Columns button.
- Each column has a button labeled Hide Column or Show Column. To hide a column select Hide Column. In this example, we will hide the default Midterm column.
- This will hide the column and change the button to Show Column. Both Midterm and Final column are now hidden.
- Select Save.
- If you need to show them again in this tab view of the grade book, you can select them again in order to show the columns.
- If you have many columns to hide you can select the check boxes for each column and then select the Show or Hide buttons. Don’t forget to select Save when done.
NOTE: Different tab views of the grade book can have columns showing or hiding. You may want all columns to show in Grades, but only show specific columns in the Custom View.
Renaming Columns
You can rename columns, but if a column is attached to an assessment, assignment, or discussion topic it should be edited in the Edit Properties at the specific tool. There is a field in the Edit Properties to label the grade book column that is attached to the activity. The steps listed here are for manually-created columns.
To rename a manually-created column:
- From the Teach tab, enter the grade book.
- Select the Grade Book Options button
- Select Column Settings and click your mouse button.
- Scroll to the right to find the column you wish to rename. Bb Vista will indicate if you can edit a column if it has colored text and an action link for editing:
- Select the action link (the drop-down arrow).
- Select the Rename option.
- A small pop-up window will appear. You can edit the name in the New Value field. This example uses Semester Grade, the column label that sets the ability of importing the grades in this column into Peoplesoft (more information on this feature is found at the Grade Import Tool tutorial):
- Select Save. Your column will now be renamed.
NOTE: Once you use this label you cannot create another column of the same type with this name. If you are renaming a column that you will use for importing grades into Peoplesoft, please make sure to enter the name, Semester Grade, correctly.
Creating Columns
If you plan on creating columns for your grade book, please review the information at Creating Columns.
