Campus Support Center

Most instructors calculate grades in one of two ways:

• Total Points (Total Points divided by Points Possible)
• Weighted Categories (i.e. Homework is worth 20%, Exams are worth 80%)

This guide will explain how to set Blackboard up to calculate grades using these methods.
 To understand and explain the math behind what Blackboard is doing, a sample student gradebook has been set up below.

 

Total Point Method
 
 First, let’s understand the math behind what we want to happen. A simple division formula (568/680) yields a final grade of 83.53% for the student. Unfortunately, Blackboard does not calculate this way by default, so you have to set your gradebook up to do this.

 

You should already have a column in your gradebook called "Overall Grade" column.  If you copy in content from an older course then you might also have a Total column. The Overall Grade column must remain in the gradebook for reporting the grades to Banner, but the total column can be deleted if you prefer. 

Edit the Overall Grade/Total column and configure how you want the column set up.  You can set up the overall grade based on categories, individual items, or a combo of the two things.  For total points, choose the Points tab when editing the overall grade column:

You will see the list of categories and any items that are in the categories:

You can choose to score the entire Test category, or pick and choose the specific tests you want to count in the overall grade.  For example, if you don't want the Policy Agreements quiz to count in the overall grade then just click this symbol.  It will turn purple.  This indicates the test is not being counted in the overall grade:

Click that symbol again to put this back in the calculation:

You can do this for every assignment/test that shows in the overall grade column.

You can also do this for an entire category.  Just click that symbol on a category heading to exclude the entire category:

In the previous example, the Forms category has zero items in it, and zero points.  There is no need to exclude this calculation from the overall grade since it has zero points, but clicking that symbol is how to do it.

Get all the categories and items included the way you want, and finally click the SAVE button at the lower right corner.

This will provide you with the student's total points divided by the possible total points.

Weighted Category Method
 
 This method is more involved than the previous method. Again, let’s understand the math behind what we want to happen. For our sample gradebook, we will assume that Homework is worth 20% and Exams are worth 80% of the student’s final grade. When using this method, it is helpful for both the student and the instructor to know the category averages, so we will include those when we set up our gradebook.    

Some tips when putting your grades in the gradebook:

• You should have at least one graded assignment in each of the categories in order for the grade to calculate correctly.  
• As you are putting in a new gradebook column for each graded assignment, make sure to assign it the appropriate category (in this case, we would categorize as either “Assignment” or “Exam”).
• It is VERY IMPORTANT that you type a zero in if a student did not earn points for an assignment! Otherwise, their Current Grade will NOT be correct. Blackboard will treat assignments with a dash as exempt and the student’s grade will appear higher than it actually is.
• It is also a good idea to keep all assignments of the same type together and in the order they were assigned. This makes more sense to the student as they are looking at their grades, rather than having randomly placed columns. 

          

Edit the overall grade column and this time choose Weighted for the calculation type:

All the categories are shown on this screen.  By default they are all given roughly the same percentage for weight.  We decided up above that exams are worth 80% and homework is worth 20%.  Find the Homework category.  Click into the field that contains the weighted percent and type in 20 percent.  Do the same for tests/exams and type in 80%:

When you assign a percentage weight to a category, the percentage is divided to each item in the category based on the proportionally or equally setting:

You may also choose to remove an item from the category, and weight it specifically.  Click the little "unlink" symbol to remove the item from the category and then give it the weight you want:

And then you can weight this item outside of the category weight:

The important thing to note is the weights must add up to 100% before you can save the weights:

Please contact the Campus Support Center at [email protected] or 479-968-0646 if you need assistance with setting up your gradebook.