Brightspace calculates final grades for each student based on the grading system and the students' grades that are entered into the Grade Book. If the instructor wants more control over the final grades, perhaps to adjust the final grade for a student that is on the cusp of a higher grade, then adjusted final grades can be used and released to students instead of the calculated final grade.
If the instructor decides to use adjusted final grades for one student in the course, adjusted final grades must be used for all students in the course. This does not imply, however, that final grades must be manually adjusted for all students.
Adjusting final grades are implemented by the instructor for only the student or students that are deemed to need an adjusted grade. The remaining students final grades would be the final grade as calculated in the Grade Book.
Note: The Grade Book must be configured to use adjusted final grades. If you plan to use adjusted final grades, you should make the adjustments before you release final grades.
Follow these steps to do it.
To adjust final grades for all students:
Get into the course where you want to adjust final grades and click Grades in the NavBar.
Click on the Enter Grades link.
Scroll over to the Final Calculated Grade column and click on the arrow on the right of the column name and select Enter Grades.
In the Final Adjusted Grade section for each student, enter the adjusted grades and then click Save.
Once you have ensured that students' grades are accurate, you can release the final grades.
To adjust final grades for one or more specific students:
Get into the course where you want to adjust final grades and click Grades in the NavBar.
Click on the Enter Grades link.
Scroll over to the Final Calculated Grade column and click on the arrow on the right of the column name and select Enter Grades.
Click on the arrow on the right of the Final Grades and click Transfer All, then click Yes.
In the Final Adjusted Grade section, enter adjusted scores where necessary and click Save.
Once you have ensured that students' grades are accurate, you can release the final grades.
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Unlike other grade items and categories in the Grade Book, final grades are not available to students by default. Final grades must be released. When setting up the Grade Book, the instructor can choose to automatically release final grades so that the students can see their final grade throughout the semester. If you did not choose to enable the automatic release of final grades when setting up your Grade Book, you will have to manually release final grades in order for students to see their final grade.
Additionally, you can selectively release final grades for some students now and release the final grades for other students later. For example, you can release the final grades for graduating seniors on one date and release the final grades for everyone else on a later date.
Follow these steps to do it.
To manually release final grades:
On the NavBar, click Grades.
On the Enter Grades page, from the Final Calculated Grade or Final Adjusted Grade context menu, click Enter Grades.
To release grades for all users, on the Final Grades page, from the Final Grades context menu, click Release All. To release final grades for a specific user, do one of the following:
Select the check box by the user name and click the Release/Unrelease link.
Select the check box in the Release Final Calculated Grade or Release Adjusted Final Grade column.
Click Save.
OR watch this video for instructions on how to release final grades:
NOTE: There is a slight change in the video instructions. The "Enter Grades" option should be used anywhere in the video where "Grade All" is referenced.
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Image credit: "final grades" by jflorent is dedicated to public domain under CC0 and is a derivative of grade by OpenClipart-Vectors on Pixabay
In a Chronicle of Higher Education article, Kevin Gannon wrote about what he describes as grading jail. He found that he would enter his grading jail around the 13th week of the term. After a career of repeat offenses against efficient and timely grading of student work, he saw that he could only blame himself. He described himself as a hopeless recidivist.
The hard time he served was enough to rehabilitate him, and turn him into a productive member of the grading society. He shared what he learned, hoping to save others from the same fate. He acknowledges that providing students with prompt feedback is a better practice. But too often this does not happen.
Kevin’s three strategies to better manage grading workflow are:
Pre-semester calendaring. Before classes start lay out a calendar for every month of the term. Then using different colors for each course, plot out the due dates for every assignment that you will give throughout the term. A cluster of different colors in a three-day span is a quick visual cue that you should reconsider some due dates.
Rubrics — done well — are your friend. A well-constructed rubric involves a significant investment of time on the front end, but once designed, using it to assess student work will cut grading time. The time saved allows you to concentrate on providing more meaningful individual feedback. Having specific criteria and clearly defined benchmarks provides consistency in grading.
Speech-to-text and voice comments. Using speech-to-text to transcribe comments in real time is one way to provide substantial feedback on a large amount of student work without getting writer's cramp. However, it is even more meaningful to record comments and then share them with individual students via an audio file they can listen to on any device.
Kevin says these three strategies are the academic equivalent of your “get out of jail free” card.
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.
D2L (the company that owns Brightspace) uses Continuous Delivery to update our Brightspace system. The Continuous Delivery model gives us regular monthly updates allowing for incremental and easily integrated changes with no downtime required for our Brightspace system.
Our Continuous Delivery update occurs on the 4th Thursday of each month. D2L provides release notes to help users stay up-to-date with the changes.
Here are some of the updates in the November 2025/20.25.11 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Announcements – Email a copy of an announcement to your Classlist
In response to multiple Product Idea Exchange (PIE) submissions, when Instructors create a new announcement in a Course Offering, they can now choose to send a copy to all users in their Classlist as an email, sent as if from the instructor themselves.
In the user interface for creating or editing an announcement, a new Send Email Copy checkbox now appears when an instructor creates or edits an announcement.
The new Send email copy checkbox in Brightspace announcement
When an instructor selects the new checkbox, the system emails the content of the announcement to all users in the Classlist, including those who have opted out of announcement notifications, upon publishing. The email will originate from the email address of the person who publishes the announcement.
The checkbox will be automatically deselected when an announcement is copied or edited, and must be selected again before republishing.
Please be aware that if users are already receiving an automated notification email about announcements, this may result in duplicate or similar emails. Users who are not subscribed to receive a notification for announcements will also receive an email, ensuring that important information contained within the announcement is delivered to every learner.
For consistency with automated emails in Intelligent Agents and assignment submissions, the system sends the message to internal email addresses if users have them. If users do not have internal email addresses, the system sends it to their external email address.
Users without a valid email address will not receive an emailed copy of the announcement.
For announcements scheduled to publish at a later date, clicking the Send email copy checkbox emails the copy to users in the Classlist at the time that the announcement is published.
This feature implements the following Product Idea Exchange (PIE) items:
D1923 (Email Notification Option when Creating New News Items)
D3817 (Default email notification when publishing a news item)
2) Assignments – Advanced Assessment now shows when an evaluation has no designated evaluator
A new alert in the assignments user interface now notifies instructors when an evaluation currently has no evaluator assigned, so they can quickly identify the problem and take steps to assign a new evaluator.
This update helps prevent unexpected evaluation errors and improves clarity, especially for institutions with large enrollments and multiple sections.
Previously, if an instructor used Advanced Assessment features to delegate evaluation to a user who later became unenrolled from a course, there was no way to identify which submissions needed to be assigned a new evaluator. Learner submissions could remain unevaluated for extended periods of time, causing confusion and errors.
An example of a warning message when an assignment has no assigned evaluator
3) Brightspace – Progress bar for uploading files
With this release, Brightspace improves visual consistency and accessibility by updating progress bar indicators across several tools. These improvements enhance support for screen readers and assistive technologies.
Visual indicators have been updated in the following areas:
New Content Experience – Upload a file
Quizzes – Add Existing Question
Import Quiz Questions – Upload a file
Quiz Study Support – Check if the quiz meets the study support requirements
Generate Question – Choose a file to generate a question
Content Uploader – Upload a file
Manage Groups – Export progress bar
Upload File (Classic Content) – Upload a file
An example of the progress bar updating as a user adds a module to the Table of Contents in Brightspace, indicating the step-by-step progress
4) Brightspace Editor – Equation editor now uses the latest WIRIS version
The equation editor Instructors and Learners use to compose equations in the Brightspace Editor (WIRIS) has been updated to the latest version, 7.24.0.
This update includes no functional changes to the equation editor, but does include WIRIS defect fixes.
5) Grades – Bulk edit now supports excluding items from final grade
Instructors can now use the Exclude from Final column when bulk editing grade items in the Grades tool. Selecting this option excludes the grade item from the final grade calculation.
Previously, this setting was only available when editing individual grade items. This enhancement helps instructors manage large grade books more efficiently by allowing them to update multiple items at once.
In the Bulk Edit Items and Categories page, select Exclude from Final for each item to omit from the final grade
Note: This option is only available in courses using the Points grading system. Courses using Weighted or Formula grading systems can exclude items by assigning a weight of 0 or excluding them from the formula, respectively.
This feature implements the following PIE items:
D1773 (Bulk Edit Grade Item)
D9984 (Course-level configuration to include/exclude grade from Final Grade)
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.
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.
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.
As the semester winds down, many faculty members find themselves knee-deep in grading. Entering grades into Brightspace may be a time-consuming task, especially when you need to assign the same grade to multiple students. Whether it's a pass/fail assignment, a standardized in-class activity, or a participation grade, manually entering the same score repeatedly can be cumbersome and time-consuming.
In my last blog post, I explained how instructors should input grades and feedback in the Grade Book. Today, I'll share a helpful tip: using the "Set Grades" feature to quickly assign the same grade to multiple students.
Follow these steps to do it.
Give Multiple Students the Same Grade at the Same Time:
From the NavBar, click on Grades.
Click on the arrow on the right of the Grade Item name.
Select Enter Grades.
Select the checkboxes next to the names of the students OR select all of the students at once by clicking on the checkbox above the list of students.
Select Set Grades.
Enter a value in the Grade textbox.
Select Save.
Select Save and Close.
Give Multiple Students the Same Feedback at the Same Time:
From the NavBar, click on Grades.
Click on the arrow on the right of the Grade Item name.
Select Enter Grades.
Select the checkboxes next to the names of the students OR select all of the students at once by clicking on the checkbox above the list of students.
Select Add Feedback.
Enter feedback in the textbox.
Select Save.
Select Save and Close.
NOTE: Giving multiple students the same feedback at the same time as described in this blog post is helpful for giving multiple students, like group members, the same feedback on an assignment/activity. I do not recommend using the Add Feedback functionality in this way if you want or need to provide more personalized details to each student. In that case, you should enter the personalized feedback for each student individually.
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.
Assessments measure student achievement. They may take the form of traditional assessments such as exams, or quizzes, but may also be part of learning activities such as group projects, discussions, or presentations.
Brightspace has a number of tools instructors can use to assess learners and the Grades tool is useful for assigning and keeping track of learner grades. If you are not familiar with setting up your Grade Book, review Brightspace Tip #542: Grade Book for information.
There are multiple ways to enter grades for learner submissions in Brightspace. Three ways instructors can enter grades in their Brightspace courses are:
Using Quick Eval
Within Individual Tools
In the Grade Book
Quick Eval
Quick Eval is a tool that allows evaluators to see a list of unevaluated learner submissions from all their courses. Submissions from Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes are displayed in one location to improve efficiency when locating work that requires evaluation and providing feedback to learners. Instructors can use Quick Eval to assess learner submissions.
Within Individual Tools
For assessments that are created using a Brightspace tool, such as Quizzes, Assignments, and Discussions, instructors will associate the assessment with a Grade Item in the Grade Book. The association is made within the tool itself. When you are ready to grade the student’s work, you will grade it within the tool and the grade will automatically transfer over to the Grade Item in the Grade Book.
In the Grade Book
For assessments that occur outside of Brightspace, instructors have to create a Grade Item in the Grade Book, and then manually enter student grades into the Grade Book. Examples of in-class assessments where you may need to manually enter grades in the Grade Book include participation grades, tests administered on-paper, presentations, and demonstrations.
Instructors can manually enter grades for assessments in the Grade Book’s Standard View or Spreadsheet View.
Standard View
The Standard View allows instructors to enter grades by grade item for all students in the course or for an individual student.
The standard view allows instructors to evaluate individual learner submissions. Each submission type has a unique icon and new learner submissions are identified with a dot on the corner of the icon.
Learner submission icons with a new submission indicator dot on the discussion icon
Click the associated icon next to the learner submission to evaluate the submission.
Spreadsheet View
The Spreadsheet View allows instructors to enter grades for all students and all grade items in a single spreadsheet view. For quick edits, click “Switch to Spreadsheet View” (the button toggles back and forth between “Standard View” and “Spreadsheet View.”)
The Spreadsheet View allows instructors to manually enter or modify grades in cells. Instructors can also override previously-entered grades using the Spreadsheet View.
Entering the new or updated grade in the field for the learner and the submission
Spreadsheet View is ideal for entering grades for assessments that occurred outside of Brightspace. Once you’ve entered the grades, save the changes before leaving the page.
Entering Feedback
You can enter feedback by clicking on the arrow to the right of the grade item (column) you want to add feedback to, then select Enter Grades.
Locate the name of the student you want to provide feedback for, then select the pencil icon under the Feedback column and enter the feedback.
The pencil icon opens the feedback dialog box
Once you’ve entered the grades and feedback, save the changes before leaving the page.
NOTE: When entering feedback you have the option to enter private comments that will only be visible to you and users with grading privileges. Learners cannot see private comments.
Important
Remember tool-based assessments should be graded using the respective assessment tool.
Use the Enter Grades tab to easily view all learner grades, grade categories and grade items. From the Enter Grades tab, instructors can assess and evaluate grades for activities conducted outside of Brightspace.
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.
The instructor’s view of grades is not the same as the learner's view of grades. Did you know you can get a preview of what a learner sees when they view their grades in your course?
To verify what a learner sees when they view their grades, an instructor can Preview the learner's grades.
Follow these steps to do it.
To Preview a learner's grades you should:
On the NavBar, click Grades.
On the Enter Grades page, select "Preview" from the contextual menu associated with a learner name from the table. The Grades will appear in a new pop-up window.
NOTE: If you are meeting with a student and want to hide the grades of the other students, you should use the Grade Book Search to do so.
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.
Do you need to review a single student's grades privately? In a typical Grade Book, pulling up a student's grades will display the grades of the entire class, which is not ideal for one-on-one meetings. In Brightspace, you can solve this privacy issue instantly. Simply use the Grade Book search option to filter the view. This action will hide all other student data, allowing you to focus only on the grades for the specific student you are meeting with.
Follow these steps to do it.
To display one row in the Grade Book:
On the NavBar, click Grades.
On the Enter Grades page, enter the first and last name of the desired student in the Search For field and then click on search icon.
When done, you should only see the selected student.
Note: If you have more than one student with the same name, you can enter the 900 # of the desired student in the Search For field. Ultimately, your search results should yield the row with the desired student's record.
To display all rows in the Grade Book:
On the Enter Grades page, click on the Clear Search link.
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.
D2L (the company that owns Brightspace) uses Continuous Delivery to update our Brightspace system. The Continuous Delivery model gives us regular monthly updates allowing for incremental and easily integrated changes with no downtime required for our Brightspace system.
Our Continuous Delivery update occurs on the 4th Thursday of each month. D2L provides release notes to help users stay up-to-date with the changes.
Here are some of the updates in the October 2025/20.25.10 release that were added to our system this month:
1) Assignments — Annotation availability awareness enhancements in assignment creation
Annotations are only supported for File and File or Text Assignment Types. They are not supported for Text, Observed in person, or On paper submission assignment types. In response to requests from instructors for clearer indicators of which types of assignments support Annotations, D2L enhanced the assignment creation experience with better tool tips, visual cues, and on-screen guidance.
New informational tool tip
To make it easier for instructors to understand what the Annotations tool does and which types of assignments you can use it with, a new informational tool tip now appears beside the existing Annotations check box in the interface for creating assignments.
When you hover over the new information ( ? ) button, a tool tip displays Annotation Tools help.
New Annotation Tools help tool tip
Clicking the information ( ? ) button opens a pop-up window that explains what the Annotations tool does, and which types of assignments you can use it with. The text in the new window is as follows:
Information: Annotation Tools
Use annotation tools to add feedback directly to the uploaded documents by highlighting, drawing, and commenting. This is available for file submissions only.
New Annotation Tools informational pop-up window
Clear visual indicators make it easy to identify which assignment types support Annotations
To make it easier to immediately understand whether you can use Annotations on an assignment, the Annotations check box now appears disabled (grayed out) for non-file type assignments, such as Text, Observed in person, or On paper submission assignments.
Visual cues indicate when Annotation Tools are not available for an assignment type
Updated on-screen guidance
New on-screen guidance indicates when instructors can no longer enable Annotations for an assignment and why.
Guidance for non-file Assignment types
When you cannot enable Annotations for an assignment because the type is Text, On paper submission, or Observed in person, hovering over the Annotations check box displays the following message:
Annotation settings are locked for submissions that are not files.
New on-screen guidance shows when Annotation settings are locked because the assignment type is not File or File or Text
Guidance displayed for assignments after submissions are received
When you cannot enable Annotations for an assignment because learners already made submissions while the setting was disabled, hovering over the Annotations check box displays the following message:
Annotation settings are locked after submissions are received.
New on-screen guidance shows when Annotation settings are locked because learners made submissions for the assignment while Annotations were disabled.
2) Assignments — Improved assignment type selection interface
A usability improvement makes it easier to select the correct assignment type when you create an assignment.
Previous behavior
Previously, instructors used radio buttons to specify whether an assignment was for a Group or an Individual.
New drop-down menu for selecting Assignment type
A new drop-down menu for selecting the Assignment Type modernizes the interface and lays the groundwork for future enhancements to the Assignments tool.
New drop-down menu with Individual Assignment Type selected
3) Grades – Comments and Assessments column always visible to learners
Learners can now always see the Comments and Assessments column in Grades, ensuring that feedback and links to assessments are consistently visible. The column is no longer conditionally displayed, supporting additional links from tools such as Rubrics, Assignments, and Quizzes.
This update supports future enhancements that add information to learner feedback in Grades.
Previously, the column only appeared when a grade item included feedback.
Comments and Assessments column now appears consistently to learners in Grades
4) Media Library – Improved Media Library to help better organize and manage your course assets
This release introduces several new features to improve the capabilities of the Media Library and allow users to have a wider variety of assets that can be reused in their courses.
These improvements include:
Add Images, Office Documents, PDFs, and SCORM packages directly to Media Library for re-use across your courses.
Use Media Library’s new Manage Versions menu to upload and manage a new version of your asset.
Create folders to better organize your assets by type, subject, or however you’d like.
Share a folder with another user by adding them to a folder as a collaborator.
Manage Versions menu option in Media Library
The following file types can be uploaded to Media Library:
Video: .mp4, .avi, .f4v, .flv, .m4v, .mov, .webm, .wmv, and the ability to optimize for streaming (2GB max and up to 720p output)
Create Folder window in Media Library with options to save or cancel
5) Quizzes – Hide Quiz Question Points
Instructors can now hide the point value for quiz questions to ensure learners focus on all questions equally, without the risk of inferring the number of correct answers based on point value. This feature is particularly useful in scenarios like employee training and association quizzes.
The new feature helps with the following:
Avoiding Hints in Multi-Select and Written Response Questions. Hiding point values prevents learners from guessing the number of expected answers based on the score, promoting a more consistent effort across all question types.
Diagnostic Assessments. This option is beneficial for assessments like subject knowledge audits or start-of-term baseline knowledge checks, where the purpose is to gauge understanding rather than focus on scoring.
Encouraging Equal Effort Across Questions. By hiding point values, learners are less likely to prioritize certain questions over others based on points. Hiding point values ensures a balanced effort and enables the inclusion of control or bonus questions without indicating their significance.
A new option is available within the Timing & Display section when creating or editing a quiz.
From the Edit Quiz page, under Timing & Display, select Hide question point values to prevent learners from seeing individual question scores
This feature implements the following PIE items:
D2934 (Hide point value of quiz questions)
D10418 (Option to hide point value of quiz questions and show linked Learning Outcomes)
6) Quizzes – Improved visibility for insufficient question pools
With this release, instructors can now see a status indicator when a question pool has insufficient questions, allowing them to resolve the issue before learners begin a quiz attempt.
If a quiz attempts to draw more questions than are available in a question pool (for example, 12 questions requested but only 10 available), the interface now displays a warning indicator.
This update adds visual warnings in the following areas:
The Grading view: If learners have already completed a quiz containing an affected pool, messaging displays in the grading evaluation experience.
When grading a quiz, an error message appears indicating the question pool is exhausted
The Manage Quizzes page: A status indicator flags quizzes with insufficient question pools.
In the Manage Quizzes tab, a red warning icon appears beside a quiz name. Instructors can review quiz settings to resolve the issue
The Edit Quiz page (Quiz Builder): A warning icon appears directly on the affected question pool.
The Edit Quiz page displays a Question Pool with an error state, labeled Invalid Question Pool
The Course Import and Course Copy workflows: Validation now prevents importing or copying pools with an insufficient number of questions.
Previously, no visual indicators identified when question pools contained too few questions, and these could be imported or copied without warning.
7) Quizzes – Attempt exports retain line breaks in question content
Instructors can now export quiz attempts using the Export to CSV and Export to Excel options without removing line breaks in question text or answers.
Previously, line breaks in question text and answers were removed during export.
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.
