Instructional Support

Recommended Grades settings

Use these settings to choose what information is displayed to you and the students in the Grades area and how the grades are calculated.

  • Who is this for: All Instructors
  • What is required: A D2L Brightspace course in which you are using the grade book

Step 1: Navigate to the Grades settings area

  1. Go to the Grades tool.
  2. Click on the Settings link in the upper-right corner of the page.

Next to each option in the settings area, you will see a gray circle with a question mark. Click this icon to get more information about the setting.

Step 2: Set up your personal display options

The personal display options control how the grade book is displayed to you, as the instructor.

User Details: We recommend leaving these boxes unchecked. The grade book already includes the students’ first and last names, so you may find that including other user details will clutter the grade book.

Grade Details: These are a matter of personal preference. However, you will most certainly want to check the Points option so that you can see student scores.

  1. Points grade: is set active as default, do not change
  2. Grade scheme symbol: This will allow you to see the translation of entries reflected by your choice of grade scheme. i.e: points, percentage of letter grade.
  3. Grade scheme color: Color coding is available for a visual representation of grade level. This is subtle but may be of help when glancing at the grade book.
  4. The next three items default settings work well. Remember you can adjust these after you work with the grade book for your personal preferences.
  5. Repeat Final Grades: You have a choice to repeat your final grade choice at the beginning of the user list for quick checks.

Start Page: You can choose which view you would like set as default when your enter the grade book area. The default is set to Enter Grades, where you will see the list of students and can start entering grades.

Don’t forget to save your changes and click on the next tab at the top to follow the next Step.

Step 3: Set up the course (org unit) display options

The Org Unit Display Options control how the grade book is displayed to the students.

  1. Managing View Display Options: Choose the number of decimal places you prefer.
  2. Submission view display options:
    1. Points grade: is set active as default, do not change
    2. Grade scheme symbol: This will allow students to see the translation of entries reflected by your choice of grade scheme. ie: points, percentage of letter grade.
    3. Grade scheme color: Color coding is available for a visual representation of grade level. This may be of no interest to students.
    4. Decimals Displayed: choose your preference
    5. Characters Displayed: choose how many characters you want displayed in the grade item column text for the student
    6. Final Grade Calculation: A check in this box will allow you the opportunity to display final grade calculations to students.
    7. ePortfolio Artifacts: A check in this box will allow students to add their grades to their ePortfolio. At this time, only certain programs are using ePortfolio.

Don’t forget to save your changes and click on the next tab at the top to follow the next Step.

Step 4: Set up the calculation options

Calculation options controls the functionality of your grade book display. Here are the same options that you get as when you go through the Setup Wizard.

  1. Grading System: choose which option suits your grading system (Weighted, Points, or Formula)
  2. Final Grade Released: You can release either the value in the Calculated Final Grade field or the value in the Adjusted Final Grade field is released to users as their Final Grade.
    1. Calculated Final Grade: automatically added all the columns in the grade book, except for grade book item marked as bonus.
    2. Adjusted Final Grade: you can calculate certain columns in the gradebook or add additional points (see the example where an entry was adjusted. The grade in row 3 was adjusted from a ‘C’ to an ’A.’)
  3. Grade Calculations Drop ungraded items, this setting excludes ungraded items from the calculation of grades. Treat ungraded items as 0, the value in the Adjusted Grade field is released to users as their Final Grade.
    1. Drop ungraded items: As you can see in this screen shot, each student has in individual total that represents their work. This may give a student a false impression of their status if they have not turned all their work. Note the first 3 letter grades of “C”> Anything not turned in is dropped, be it in the future or in the past.
    2. Treat ungraded items as 0: this option will issue a zero for anything that is not graded, it will give a false reading until all grades are entered. All items in the future will be issued a zero which may cause panic for students. Note, same data as above but set to treat ungraded as 0, this causes everyone’s grade to be recorded at “F”.
  4. Auto Update: this should be checked to update any changes made.

Don’t forget to click Save and Close.