Grade Book

Grade Book is one of the four main course management tools that Section Instructors can use to manage members. NOTE: The term "members" simply refers to users that are enrolled in your course in any of the five roles: Section Designer, Section Instructor, Teaching Assistant, Student, and Auditor.

To access the course Grade Book:

• You must have Section Instructor or Teaching Assistant privileges.  However, the Teaching Assistant can work with the Grade Book only if permitted to do so by the Section Instructor.
• From the Teach tab, click the Grade Book tool on the Instructor Tools menu.

Grade Book's main purposes are to:

• View, enter, and manage grades for all Students and Auditors.
   
• Enter descriptive data about Students and Auditors. For example: names, addresses, telephone numbers, areas of interest.
   
• Grant or deny access to the course for all members.
   
• Enroll new users in roles, as long as user records have already been created for them by an administrator and you know their user name.

Students and Auditors will not be able to view other Students' and Auditors' grades. Students and Auditors view grades via their My Grades channel in My WebCampus and My Grades tool within the course (if added to My Tools).

Grade Book is a spreadsheet-like tool, in that it contains a grid of rows and columns: each row is a member and each column is a type of data. Unlike a spreadsheet, which is open-ended in the type of data you can enter in each cell, in Grade Book, each column can only contain a certain type of data, such as numbers or letter grades. This ensures the integrity and standardization of data for export and other operations. Columns either appear by default in Grade Book or are added by you.

Default Columns:

The following columns are system-created:

• User-related: Last Name, First Name, User ID, and Role. These columns pull their information from the member's user/enrollment record and cannot be modified in Grade Book. See your administrator to make edits to values in these columns.

• Grade-related: Midterm and Final. These columns cannot be deleted and are used to calculate a Student's midterm and final grade. These columns are unique because only their values can be exported to Student Information Systems (SIS). These two columns are, by default, calculated columns, but you can change the column type to something else.

• Cross-listing related: if the course has been cross-listed, a Cross-listing Information column appears with the name of the course each member was originally enrolled in. The Cross-listing Information column only appears if the course has been cross-listed.

• Quiz, Assignment, and Discussion Topic columns: if there are any quizzes, assignments, or gradable discussion topics created in the course, a corresponding grade-related column will be automatically created in Grade Book. Creation of a survey also creates a column in the Grade Book, contents indicating whether the survey has been completed or not.

Columns Added by You:

When adding a column, you specify whether the column is grade-related or not, and whether it is released or not to students. Only grade-related columns can be exported. You can create columns of the following types:

• Alphanumeric columns: allow you to enter a combination of letters and numbers. For example: Use an alphanumeric column to enter Student campus registration numbers that contain both letters and numbers.
   
• Calculated columns: allow you to specify a formula (that can include other numeric columns) to come up with a numeric value. For example: You could use a calculated column to calculate an interim grade.
   
• Grading form columns: allow you to calculate a numeric grade, based on a grading form. For example: You could use a grading form column to record grades for a discussion topic that is graded using a grading form.
   
• Letter grade columns: to calculate a letter grade based on the numeric values of another column.
   
• Numeric columns: allow you to enter numbers only. For example: You could use a numeric column to insert grades for an offline assignment and other interim grades.
   
• Selection list columns: allow you to specify one or more text values that can then be selected. For example: You could use a selection list column to describe a Student's overall term effort (fair, good, excellent).
   
• Text columns: allow you to enter text only. For example: You could use a text column to add comments about each member for your own benefit or to enter online feedback regarding classroom or lab activities for students to view.

Tabbed Organization

Grade Book is divided into tabs. These tabs present different groups of data columns to give you a different view of all entered information for members. NOTE: You can choose to hide any columns from displaying in a tab.

• Grades displays all default columns and any created columns that are tagged as grade-related. This tab is used to view, enter, or override grade-related information.

• Members displays all default columns (except quiz, survey, assignment and discussion topic columns), and any created columns that are not tagged as grade-related. This view is meant to hold descriptive information about Students and Auditors, according to the information that you want to store. Example: You could create columns to add your comments about each Student, their first language, their role in the course, or anything else you wanted to remember.

• View All displays all columns, grade-related or not. The order of columns in this tab will also be reflected in students' My Grades view.

• Custom View, similar to the View All tab, also displays all columns, grade-related or not, but you can use it to create your own "custom view" of member information.

• SCORM Grades displays columns that are automatically added for gradable SCORM modules.