Navigate the Grade Center

Blackboard's Grade Center (grade book) is a powerful tool with many useful features. Learn how to navigate, view, understand, customize, and control the grade center.

Methods of Entering the Grade Center

In the course management menu, you will find a link to the Grade Center. When expanded, you should see Full Grade Center, Needs Grading, and assorted Smart Views. Here is how to use each of these doorways into the Grade Center.

Full Grade Center

Use this view when you need a birds eye view of your class. The Full Grade Center will show you every grade column, as well as total columns, the Last Access column (to see when a student last entered your course), and more.

One good reason to visit the full grade center is to manually assign a zero to any work that was not submitted.

Needs Grading

Use this view to see a list of all work in your course that is waiting for you to grade it. If there are multiple items waiting to be graded, you can filter the list based on the assignment, the user, and so on.

Smart Views

Smart views allow you to directly see pre-defined sections of your grade center. For example, courses using Online Learning's accessible course template will have smart views for Assignments and Tests. The Assignments view will open the grade center, but will show ONLY grade columns for items that are in the Assignments category. The Tests smart view will open only items in the Tests category. You can add new smart views or delete any smart views from the Grade Center menu.

Grade Center Icons

The Grade Center includes an Icon Legend at the lower right area of the screen in Full Grade Center or Smart View pages. Click the Icon Legend button to expand the full legend. Here are three key icons that can help you interpret your Grade Center.

Needs Grading

This icon appears when a student has met the requirements for an assignment to be graded. This icon always appears when an Assignment is submitted. It also appears when a student has made the minimum required number of discussion posts to merit grading. This icon can also appear when a test is submitted after the due date or when some questions on a test require manual grading.

Attempt In Progress

This icon appears when a student has started, but not yet submitted, a test. It also appears when a student visits an Assignment dropbox using the Blackboard smartphone app. In this case, it does not mean the student has actually started a submission. This icon appears most frequently in discussions, indicating a student has made at least one post, but that the student has not yet made the minimum required number of discussion posts to merit grading.

Override

This icon (the orange triangle at the top left of a cell with a grade in it) appears when the instructor has manually entered a grade through the Grade Center, instead of entering the grade in the grading interface for an Assignment, Discussion, Test, etc. It is necessary to manually enter a zero for work when students do not submit any attempts.

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