Changes to the Gradebook in Online Courses

March 28, 2011 | 3 Minute Read

In response to faculty and TA feedback, we've made a number of small, yet hopefully useful, changes to the Gradebook in online courses.

• A new, streamlined view of the individual student Gradebook page has been implemented. We've removed a lot of the repetitive text and visual clutter and made it easier for students to see their grades and feedback in a simple, grid format.
• All activity related to a student grade is now logged and displayed in the grade history. Previously, only changes to a grade were logged. Now, if a file is uploaded for student feedback, that is logged. If a grade is deleted after one has been entered, that is logged.
• The "Grades by Activity" view now displays 50 students per page, up from 25.
• Page load time on Gradebook items linked to the Quiz Generator is significantly faster.
• Uploading large ZIP files with more than 100 student submissions is now handled better by the Gradebook.
• A warning is now given that grades will be deleted if you change the setup for an item in the Gradebook where grades exist.
• A warning is now given if the overall grading method for the Gradebook is percentage-based, but the items in the Gradebook do not total to or go over 100%.
• Deselecting "Display the grade for each activity in the student view" on the Gradebook setup page now correctly deselects the appropriate checkbox all the way down the chain, including all checkboxes next to each student name for each graded item in the Gradebook. Previously, you had to reselect the "Display Grade in Student View" option for each activity that had already been graded and then deselect it to have all the Display Grade options deselected.
• A warning is now displayed on the "Enter Grades" view when feedback has already been sent to students that any changes in feedback automatically result in an email with the updated feedback being sent to students.
• When editing existing text feedback, the "Write new text Feedback" button has been removed and replaced by a "Save Text Feedback" button. Faculty and TAs would sometimes click this button thinking it was a save button, but instead it would delete existing feedback and allow them to start with an empty slate.
• You can no longer alter the automatically calculated percentage value on the "Prepare Final Grade" page. Previously, you could change this value but it would not be saved when the "Save All Grades" button was clicked, confusing many people.
• When you manually override a grade pulled in from the Quiz Generator, the "Email Grade/Feedback to this Student" button does not appear for students who have not yet been sent feedback, as feedback for items in the Quiz Generator should be sent from the Quiz Generator. You can only email a grade for an quiz/exam from the Quiz Generator from the Gradebook if you manually override a grade created in the Quiz Generator.

Revised documentation for the Gradebook is also now available within the Gradebook tool. This documentation includes common setup and grading scenarios and how to handle those scenarios in the Gradebook.

Again, these changes came about as the direct result of faculty and TA feedback about Gradebook and how it did (or did not) work for them. We encourage you to continue to provide us feedback so that we can make the Gradebook (and all the tools in online courses and CoursePlus) even better.