Weighted Totals

Many instructors use a weighted total to calculate their grades. This lesson explains how to set up a weighted total using categories.

Set up your grading scheme in your syllabus

Your syllabus should let your students know your grading scheme. For example:

  • Discussion Participation = 15%
  • Quizzes = 20%
  • Workshop Piece = 20%
  • Essay (including rough draft) = 20%
  • Midterm, Final Exam = 25%

The totals should add up to 100%. The actual weighting will of course reflect the goals and objectives of your own course.

Set up categories to match the categories in your syllabus

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Define categories in Blackboard to match the categories in your syllabus. In the Full Grade Center you will go to "Manage" and then choose "Categories".
For more details go to
http://blackboardhelp.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/creating-and-managing-categories/

You should have categories corresponding to everything in your syllabus. In this case:

  • Discussion
  • Quiz
  • Workshop Piece
  • Essay
  • Exam

Create or Edit a Weighted Total

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The "Weighted" Column is created automatically when a new blackboard shell is created. Look for this column, click on the two downward facing arrows to the right of the column header and from the menu choose "Edit Column Information"

You can also add a new column by moving your mouse over the "Create Calculated Column" button and choosing "Weighted Column". if you do so, then delete the Weighted Column that came with your course. The Delete Column choice is visible in the menu above. When you copy a course which has a weighted column into a blank shell you also end up with two weighted columns – delete the one you are not using.

Notice also that you have a choice to "Show/Hide" the column to Users. If you hide the column it will appear in your grade center with a circle with a red slash next to it – indicating it is hidden from students but not from you. This is a good way to display information that might be useful to you (such as unweighted total points) but is confusing to students.

Enter Column Information

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Whether you start a new column or edit column information –

  1. Your column needs a column name. The grade center display name may be a shorter version of this.
  2. Primary Display is generally set to Percentage. It is not recommended that you set it to "Letter" because the exact letter grade is not meaningful until the end of the semester when all the grades are entered.

Scroll Down to Select Columns

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You can weight by item (grade column) or by category
In this example we will weight by category

  1. Click on a Category Name on the left (one that matches you syllabus
  2. Click on the right facing arrow to move it into the box on the right.

Set the weight and other options

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Once you’ve chosen a category and clicked the right-arrow, it will be on the list to the right. Set the percentage and options.

  1. Enter the percentage mentioned in your syllabus.
  2. Decide if you want the items to be weighted equally of proportionally. If equally, all that matters is what percent of the total score the student got on each item (such as 17 of 20 points). An item that is 20 points will "count" the same as an item that is 10 points. If you check "proportionally" a 20 point item will count twice as much as a 10 point item.
  3. If you choose to drop some of the scores (the two lowest quizzes for example) then enter a number (the number 2 in the lower box)

Enter all categories

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Enter all the categories from your syllabus and give them the appropriate weights.

Calculate as Running Total? Yes or no?

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Under the category list you will find the choice of whether or not to Calculate as Running Total.

  • If YES then blanks in the gradebook will not count – only the items that have grades or for which zero has been entered will count.
  • If NO then blanks will count as zero

Running total YES may give a better number as the semester goes by, but can still be misleading (e.g., if a student has done well on a number of quizzes that are not weighted highly but then take an exam with a much greater weight and don’t do so well – their percentage can change drastically. Students should always be made aware that grades are not complete until everything it graded.

Running total NO may also be misleading if all or your items are not yet in your gradebook or are not yet in the right category.

Other Options

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Set other options. Usually you will NOT want to include this column in Grade Center Calculations (i.e., it is not part of the Total). You can choose to show/hide this column from students and change this option later.

When you are done click Submit

Make sure all your items are in the correct categories

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Throughout the rest of the semester you will need to make sure all your items are in the correct categories. Go to Manage then Column Organization to view and change categories in bulk
.
For more details go to
http://blackboardhelp.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/creating-and-managing-categories/

Many items automatically go into categories

  • Graded Discussion Forums go into "Discussion"
  • All online quizzes, tests, etc go into "Test"
  • All assignments (tool for accepting and returning papers) go into "Assignments"

This means you will have to move things to correct categories. For example – if your online tests include both "Quizzes" and the midterm and final exams, you’ll need to move the quizzes into the category "Quiz" and the midterm and final into a category "Exam" (or leave them in "Tests" and use that only for these items). Similarly if the Assignment feature is used for turning in assignments that fit into different categories, you’ll need to manually move each into its correct category. This can be done either by editing Column Information individually (using the dropdown menu next to the column header in the main Grade Center) or by going to Manage and Column Organization as shown above.

Creating and managing categories

Categories are used to organize your grade center and calculate weighted grades. Some items go automatically into categories:

  • Online tests, quizzes, etc. go into the category “tests”
  • Graded discussion forums go into “discussion”
  • “Assignments” (the tool for turning in an returning papers) go into the category “Assignments”

These may or may not match your grading scheme. For example – some of your online tests may be “quizzes” while others are midterm exams, unit exams, etc. Some of your discussion may count as “Participation” while others count in other categories. You can create as many categories as you need and place grade columns in the appropriate category.

Go to the grade center

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In the Control Panel, expand “Grade Center” then click on “Full Grade Center”.

Under “Manage” go to “Categories”

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In the Grade Center, move your mouse over the Manage button and then click on “Categories”.

Create the category you want

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  1. Click on the “Create Category” button
  2. Give your category a name
  3. Add a description if desired.
  4. Click Submit

Delete unwanted categories

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In the Grade Center, after you click on “Manage” and then “Categories, you may have noticed that you have all your categories listed. This includes pre-made categories as well as any you have created. You can simplify things by deleting unwanted Categories. (You cannot delete categories that are in use or those which are the automatic categories such as “test”, “discussion”, “assignment”)

Simply check the box next to any unused category you want to delete, then click the delete button.

This screen is also a good place to quickly see which categories your items are already in.

Placing items in categories

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To place an individual item in a category, click on the drop-down menu in the column header (the downfacing arrows) then click Edit Column Information

Assign a Category

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Within area 1. Column Information, choose a category for that grade column.

Change category for multiple items

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You can change the category for multiple items at the same time.

  • In the Full Grade Center, Go to Manage and Column Organization

Check off the items you want to place in the same category

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Check the box next to all the items you want to place in the same category

Scroll to the top or bottom and look for the button “Change Category to …”

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  1. Scroll to the top or bottom and find the button “Change Category to … “
  2. When you move your mouse over this button – you’ll get a list of all the categories.
  3. Click on the Category you wish to move your items into.

Next step: Weighted grades by category

One to the most useful features of categories is that you can make a column to calculate a Weighted Total using categories. This will be described separately.