Yes! If you use percentages rather than points for the grading breakdown in your syllabus, you can change the Grades Area settings in your Blackboard course to do the same.
You can create a Weighted Total Column in your course’s grade center, and Blackboard will do all of the math for figuring out your students’ grades.
With a weighted total column, you can select multiple grade columns or categories, then set the value of each of them as a percentage of students’ overall course grade. You can also opt to have Blackboard automatically drop students’ grades for a series of assignments, e.g., you could require 6 quizzes during the semester but drop students’ lowest quiz score.
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UMS’s training center has a series of tutorials on Blackboard’s Grade Center, including creating weighted grade columns. Note that you might be prompted to log in with your UMS credentials to access these tutorials.
To create a weighted grade column,
- Go to the Full Grade Center in your course.
- Find the Weighted Total column in the grades table, then click the down arrow to the right of its name. A menu will appear.
- Click Edit Column Information. The Edit Weighted Column page will open.
- Select what type of grade will be displayed for students in the Primary Display dropdown menu. (By default, this option is set to percentage, but you can opt to display a score or letter grade instead.)
- Select the grade columns and categories that will be calculated in the weighted column in the Select Columns section. (You may need to scroll down the page to find this section.) To select an item, simply
- click on its name, then
- click the right-arrow icon next to the Selected Columns box.
- Enter a percentage for each item. (See the note below about options for weighting categories.)
- Click the Submit button at the bottom-right side of the page when you are done.
NOTE
When you add a category to a weighted column, you can opt to have Blackboard automatically drop students’ highest or lowest scores through the “Drop Grades” option, or you can have Blackboard calculate the weighted grade using only students’ highest or lowest score through the “Use only the” option.
