Organizing your Grade Book using categories offers significant advantages beyond simply creating headings for your Grade Items. One key benefit is the ability to automatically drop the lowest grade within a category. This blog post will guide you through the process of setting up Grade Categories in Brightspace specifically for this purpose. To follow along, you'll first need to have your related Grade Items grouped within a Category in your Grade Book. If you haven't done this yet, please refer to "Creating Grade Items and Categories" for instructions.
NOTE:
You can only drop grades from Categories in which the items are weighted equally:
- If you are using a weighted final grade, you’ll have to distribute weights evenly within the category to drop a grade.
- If you are using a total points final grade, you will have to assign equal points to all the items in the category to drop a grade. For this reason, it is not recommended to have items with different maximum point values in the same category, for example, a quiz worth 25 points and another worth 10 points.
Follow these steps to do it.
Drop Grades From a Grade Category:
- From the NavBar, click on Grades.
- Click New to create a new category, OR click on the arrow to the right of your category name and click on Edit to modify an existing category.
- In the Distribution section, choose the “Distribute weight evenly across all items” radio button and then enter the number of low (non-bonus) Grade Items that will be dropped from the category.
- Click Save and Close.
Note: The instructions in this blog post work for Grade Items in categories that are equally weighted. If the Category contains Grade Items with unequal weights, you can use the "Bulk Edit Exemptions" option to manually review each student's grades and choose the grade that you want to exempt from the final grade calculations. Step-by-step instructions can be found in this article from the Brightspace Community that explains how to manually drop the lowest grade.
Want more information?
Create Grade Items and Categories
Use Bulk Edit Exemptions to Drop the Lowest Grade
Brightspace Tip #503: Grade Book
Brightspace Tip #506: Grade Book – Enter Grades and Feedback
Brightspace Tip #507: Grade Book – Bulk Enter Grades
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or schedule a one-on-one session, email, or
call Janice Florent: (504) 520-7418.
Note: Are you doing something innovative in Brightspace or perhaps you've discovered a handy tip? Share how you are using Brightspace in your teaching and learning in The Orange Room.
Image credit: “drop lowest grade” by jflorent is licensed under CC BY 3.0 and is a derivative of Asssignment by Maria AG from The Noun Project