Manage the Grade Center Display   Use the Filter button to condense the view and navigate to items more quickly. Filtering can help if you have lots of grade items. Click Filter to see the following options display: Under Current View, you can elect to display the Full Grade Center (default), Smart Views and Grading Periods. Under Category, you can elect to display any category which you’ve assigned grade items to. Under Status, notice that you can elect to display only items that need grading, grade items that are exempt, not attempted (in case you need to  manually enter zeros), and so on.

  Retention Center   Here are some common questions instructors have about students in their course: Who’s logging into the course? Are my students engaged? Whose grades are suffering? Who has missed deadlines?   And there are more. Blackboard’s Retention Center helps discover which students in a course are at risk. Based on default rules and rules you create, students' engagement and participation are visually displayed, quickly alerting you to potential risk. From the Retention Center, you can communicate with struggling students and help them take immediate action for improvement. You can use the Retention Center features immediately—there’s no setup required. See attached document for further details and steps.

 Using Student Preview   Chances are you’ve experimented with Student Preview already. When exiting student preview, you’re prompted (right) whether to Delete the preview user and all data (this is the recommended default) or keep the data.   After exiting student preview, one way to tell if you’ve kept the preview user and all data is the Enter Student Preview button will appear green.  This button will appear green regardless if editing is turned on or off.  IMPORTANT: The preview user is also listed in the Full Grade center (not visible to students) along with any graded information. However, the student preview user will also be listed in the course roster (Users and Groups) and is visible to students. The preview student can potentially confuse your students who may try to interact with this user.  If you keep your preview user account and run reports or gather statistics from your course, your numbers will be skewed, particularly if multiple instructors use student preview.  If you’ve chosen the third option, …Do Not Ask Me Again, but wish to delete student preview data, enter student preview again and click Settings:

 Navigation Options for Grading   When grading students you have two primary options for navigation. You can navigate to the previous or next student using the left and right arrows with this bar: Or you can use the Jump To button which provides the option to select the current assignment and choose a student from a drop-down list or choose a different assignment and student. You can also select which attempt you’d like to grade:

  Drop Lowest Grade   You can drop the lowest grade or grades for categories that have multiple submissions. For example, discussion forums, homework, quizzes, and more. Before beginning, make sure you’ve created categories and have added those categories to the various activities in your course. Here’s how to drop the lowest grade in a category: Navigate to the full Grade Center  Choose the chevron to edit to the Total column Under Select Columns choose Selected Columns and Categories Select the categories you wish to include in the course total and advance them to the right: Specify the number of low grades you wish to drop for that category. Note: if you’ve applied weights to categories, you’ll see the option to drop grades. This will be in the same place you apply weights.

  Factoring Extra Credit with Weighted Grades   When weighting grades, categories are created the assigned weights as shown left. You cannot add an extra credit column as a weighted column, however. In order to factor in extra credit with weighted grades, you create a new Total column, then select the Weighted total column along with the Extra Credit column to calculate the course grade.

  What is Grading Schema?   In the Grade Center, numeric grades appear by default. A schema takes the points scored on an item and compares it to the item's total points possible to derive a percentage. This percentage is mapped to a range of scores and displays a grade, such as a letter (A, B, C) or Pass/Fail. Grading Schema information is presented in a table format. The Grade Center includes a copy of a default grading schema based on assigning letters to the percentages. Your institution may edit this schema to reflect a general grading schema used for all courses. TIP: You can make the uppermost value in a grading schema greater than 100%. For more information, visit https://help.blackboard.com and type “Grading Schemas” in the search bar. 

  How to Copy a Blackboard Course Content   When copying a course, the process takes place inside the source course - the course you wish to copy. The destination course is the empty course you wish to copy content into.  Find the destination course and navigate to Course Management, Customization, Properties. Make note of the listed Course ID. Enter the source course that has content you wish to copy.  On the Control Panel, expand the Packages and Utilities section and click Course Copy.  Select the option: Copy Course Materials into an Existing Course.   In the Destination Course ID box click the Browse button to view a list of your courses.  In the popup window that appears, select the appropriate course ID from your list of courses and click Submit. The course ID will populate in the Destination Course ID Box. Select the course materials that you want to copy over to the existing course. We recommend Select All as it is easier to delete the items you do not want later. Make sure to choose "Include only the forums, with no starter posts" under the Discussion Board. Here's a sample: In the File Attachments section, select Copy links and copies of the content: DO NOT SELECT "Include Enrollments in the Copy". Click Submit. You will receive an email from Blackboard once the copy has been successful. Check your content in the destination course to make sure everything works. You will likely need to replace links to third party tool integrations. Additional Blackboard Help Resources Check these resources for more information. How-to Video on Copying a Course Blackboard Learn Help for Instructors

  Verbally Record Grading Feedback   Sometimes it can be more effective and efficient to verbally record feedback of students’ work. To do this open the Full Grade Center and view the attempt you want to grade. Expand the panel to view Feedback to Learner. In the Feedback to Learner area, select the tool “ Click to open full content editor ” shown right. Type a message to the student in content window (shown below). Select the microphone tool in the last row of the editor. Note that you might be prompted to give the browser permission to use audio the first time you open the recording window. Once the microphone tool has been clicked, a screen will appear prompting you to record your comments. Click the red record button. A countdown starting from 5 will appear. You can record up to 5 minutes. When finished, click the red button to stop recording. You can listen to the recording, delete it and start over, or choose Save and Exit. Choose Insert Recording to complete the process. When finished, click Submit.

You can run several types of course reports to view information about course usage and activity. You can view summaries of course usage such as which course areas are used most frequently and course access patterns for specific students. Report data is automatically refreshed every 4 hours for all reports except activity reports. Activity data is refreshed once per day at midnight. Your institution can refresh the report data manually if needed. About Course Report Types To access course reports navigate to the Course Management panel and choose Evaluation, Course Reports. You can search the list of reports for keywords in the names or descriptions to find the report that generates the information you need. (Click links below to quickly navigate to the report.) · All User Activity inside Content Areas displays a summary of all user activity inside content areas for a course. Use this report to determine which students are active in your course and which content areas they use. · Course Activity Overview displays overall activity within a single course, sorted by student and date. Data includes the total and average time spent per active student and the total amount and type of activity each student had in the course. Optionally, you can filter the report by one or more groups. Only students who are members of the selected groups are included in report results. · Course Coverage Report displays data on course items that have been aligned to goals. · Course Performance displays how a single course performs against a selected set of goals. · Overall Summary of User Activity displays user activity for all areas of your course, as well as activity dates, times, and days of the week. Use this report to view student access as well as how often course tools are used. · Single Course User Participation Report displays the number of user submissions in your course for assignments, tests, discussions, blogs, and journals within the chosen time frame. You don't need to grade an item for data to be included in the report. The data is provided in a Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet (XLS). · Student Overview for a Single Course displays an individual student's activity within a course, sorted by date. Data includes the total overall time the student spent in the course as well as detailed information about the student's activity, such as which items and Content Areas the student accessed and the time spent on each. · User Activity in Forums displays a summary of user activity in Discussion Board Forums for the course. · User Activity in Groups displays a summary of user activity in Groups for the course. If no activity exists for an item type, no column appears. If no students submitted an assignment in the chosen time frame, no assignment column appears in the spreadsheet. Custom reports may have been developed for your institution. Contact your Blackboard Administrator for more information. For more information / examples see the attached file.