Teacher Support: Using the Gradebook (Grade-Grid view)

In this article:

• Overview
• Auto Grading
• Select Your Chapter
• Understanding the Grade-Grid view
• Pending vs Returned Grades
• Percent vs Points
• Additional Features

Overview

New as of of 7/1/22: we have released a new major design overhaul of the gradebook which we call the Grade-Grid design. Our goal is to make it faster and easier for teachers to review and grade students' submissions.

The Grade-Grid design allows teachers to see a list of their enrolled students, and all of their work in a chapter all on one screen. Student names are listed vertically down the page and content pages (videos, textbook, tests, etc.) are listed horizontally from left to right across the page.

At a glance you easily see which students have submitted work, which still need to be reviewed and submitted by you, and which need to be returned to the student. You can easily approve and return all student grades for any item in the gradebook in as few as one click.

Auto-Grading

We have a variety of assessments and things students will submit as they work through the class content on the site including multiple choice, fill-in-the-blanks, short answer and long form free-response (essay) questions. Different content items will have different assessment types. Multiple choice questions are auto-graded as right or wrong while the fill-in-the-blank questions (where students can type in a word or two as an answer) use a logic feature that will auto-score based on the correctness of a student's answer. Then we have free-response short answer and essay question, where students answers will vary widely. For these type of responses we use a credit for completion scoring.

Credit for Completion is a feature that simplifies the grading process by giving students full credit for all completed short-answer and essay questions regardless of quality or correctness. This feature is now on for all classes, saving teachers time and clicks. Teachers can always override the amount of credit given for individual questions when reviewing individual answers.

Select Your Chapter

First you need to select the chapter you are wanting to work on. In the upper left corner of the Grade-Grid, above the list of student names, you will see the chapter selector and the filter icon (looks like a funnel). Click the name of the chapter to select a different chapter from the drop down. The system will default to the last chapter you were working on, or Chapter 1 if that is indeterminable.

From this drop down chapter selector you also have two filter options which will simplify the view to only see the items you need.

• Show Pending Grades Only - This is useful to see at a glance which items you need to work on. It will eliminate any content column in the grid where the auto-scored work has already been reviewed and approved by you. Turning this filter on will show only pending grades that you need to review.
• Items that Count Toward Grade - This filter eliminates content items that are not averaged into the overall course grade. This includes the pre-tests, chapter reviews, and most activity pages.

Understanding the Grade-Grid view

After selecting a chapter in the gradebook you will see the content items for that chapter horizontally from left to right across the top of the grade-grid. Each column is labeled by lesson and content type (video, textbook, test, etc.). Each column will have a Review and Return option.

• Review allows you to review all of the individual student answers, make changes to any of the scores on the free-response answers, and move the score from a pending to an approved state, student by student. You may see a red circle with a number. This is a visual cue letting you know how many items need to be reviewed.
• Return is the easiest option. With one-click you can immediately approve all of the pending auto-scored grades and return them to the students. (A pop-up window asks you, are you sure, so technically it's two clicks, but who's counting.)

Pending vs. Returned Grades

A grade can be in one of three states: Pending, Reviewed, and Returned. With our auto-scoring in place all student work is automatically given a tentative or draft score. We indicate this by labeling the grade as pending. Pending scores can be edited or approved as-is by the teacher. Once Reviewed the grade is ready to be returned to the student. When a grade is Returned to the student, the student will be able to see those grades in their student gradebook.

• Pending grades have been auto-scored but are in a draft mode and are waiting for you as the teacher to Review and approve the grade. Grades in a pending mode are not averaged into the overall all course grade. 
• Reviewed Grades have been edited where needed and approved by the teacher, but are not visible to the students.
• Returned grades are approved by the teacher and visible to the students. At this point the grades are averaged into the overall grade.

See this article for more on Manually Reviewing and Editing Grades.

Percent vs. Points

By popular demand, teachers can now see the points value of an item and easily toggle between points and percent scoring. We have added a "View Selector" at the top middle of the gradebook which allows teachers to change the data displayed in the Grade-Grid. By default the percent grade is displayed. But teachers have the option to select a points view. This will display the total earned/available points for every gradable item in the gradebook. In addition teachers have the option to view the Date Completed and Time Spent. Teachers can easily switch the view using the new View Selector feature.

Additional Features

If you point your mouse at any square in the grade-grid you will see a three dot menu option with some additional grading features: Return, Grant Retake, Return as Zero

Return takes the grade (if pending approves the auto-scored grade) and returns that to the student. The grade is now visible to the student in their student gradebook.

Grant Retake is a feature that allows you to selectively give a student the ability to retake and resubmit any gradable item. When selected the student’s grade and previous answers will be deleted. They will then be able to retake the assessment.

Return As Zero is only shown as an option when a student has not yet submitted their work. This gives you the ability to return a zero grade score for that item. This will be averaged into their overall course grade as a zero (earning zero of the available points).

Download the Gradebook as a CSV file. Look in the upper right corner of the Grad-Grid for "Download CSV" next to the cloud icon with a down arrow. Click the text or the icon to save the CSV file to your computer and open in any spreadsheet application.