Grading Online
Grading Online
Work that students submit online can be graded within Blackboard. This applies to:
- Discussion Board posts
- Tests completed on Blackboard
- Assignments (essays or presentation files) submitted on Blackboard
When a student submits work on Blackboard that needs to be graded, the submission automatically appears in the "Needs Grading" queue that is visible to the instructor. To examine the queue, go to the Course Management Menu (the lower half of the gray panel on the left side of the screen, the click on Grade Center, then click on Needs Grading:
This will bring up a list of items that need to be graded, which will look something like the following:
This list can be filtered and sorted. You can click on any item to grade it, and then move through the list of items needing to be graded, either by student or by assignment.
What Appears in Needs Grading
- Tests made up of only objective types of questions, such as multiple choice or true-or-false, will be graded automatically by Blackboard and so won't be listed on the Needs Grading page. However, if a student submits a test after the due date and time, the submission is marked late and appears in the Needs Grading queue for any grading adjustments the instructor might want to make.
- Tests that include subjective question types, such as fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and essay, will always appear in the Needs Grading queue, even if other questions on the test are of an objective type and so were graded automatically by Blackboard.
- Discussion board posts appear in the Needs Grading queue provided that the forum in the discussion board is marked as "Gradable."
- Assignments submitted on Blackboard always appear in the Needs Grading queue, unless the submission has no effect on the student's course grade (is worth zero points, for example).
Inline Markup and Grading
Assignments (not tests or discussion board posts) that are submitted on Blackboard can be marked up by the instructor within Blackboard. These markups become a permanent part of the submission, visible to both the student and the instructor. Markups can include line-drawing, highlighting, and typed comments anchored to a portion of the submission.
Blackboard allows these types of markups only when the student has submitted a file in a supported file format. It is a good idea to provide instructions in each assignment that encourage students to submit there work in one of these supported formats:
- Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt or .pptx)
- Adobe Acrobat PDF (.pdf)
Assuming that a student's submission is in one of these formats, the grading page might look something like the following:
Links
CLICK HERE to watch a short video on grading online
CLICK HERE to visit Blackboard's Help page about the Needs Grading Queue
CLICK HERE to visit Loyola's Training page about Grading in Blackboard