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View answers to frequently asked questions asked by NIU faculty and staff.
At the request and under the guidance of NIU faculty, ITS has been working throughout the Summer and Fall 2009 to develop a building block for Blackboard that will allow NIU faculty to publish grades from the Blackboard Grade Center directly to MyNIU. Faculty who use the Blackboard Grade Center to calculate final grades will be able to choose to export final grades from Blackboard instead of manually entering grades in MyNIU, saving time and the reducing the opportunity for data entry errors. After submitting grades using this new tool, faculty simply login to MyNIU to view the final grades and post for student viewing.
This new tool is currently being piloted during the Fall 2009 semester with faculty who are using Blackboard and teach courses that end prior to the official end of the semester in December. After making any final adjustments per faculty feedback, the tool should be available campus-wide in Blackboard beginning December 4, 2009.
Note - Steps 1 and 2 described below assume use of the Grade Center to tabulate a final score and if desired apply weighting to calculate a final grade for the course. Faculty choosing to manually make these calculations and/or simply post the letter grades in Blackboard can add a new column manually, enter final grades for each student, and then skip to step 3.
The Grade Center has a default grading scale, also referred to as "Grading Schema" that can be used to convert a grade score or percentage to a letter grade. The grading schema can also be applied to Total and Weighted Total columns, whereby converting students' final score to a letter grade.
However, the default letter schema in the Grade Center likely will not match the grading scale you use for your course and therefore you need to customize the letter schema in the Grade Center to match your course grading scale. You can also choose to add a new grading schema if you wish.
If calculating final course grade based solely on a percentage of total points without any weighting, assign the Letter schema to the Total column. If the final grade is based on weighted values, configure weighting and then assign the Letter schema to the Weighted Total column. The steps below describe assigning the Letter schema to the Weighted Total column.
One column in the Grade Center must be designated as the external grade prior to using the Grade Submission Tool. When choosing to allow Blackboard to calculate grades automatically based on total score, use the Total column. If the final score is weighted, modify the Weighted Total column to configure weighting and then select the Weighted Total column as the external grade. Or, if simply creating a new column and manually posting final grades for students to view in Blackboard, designate that column as the external grade. No matter which approach to calculating and displaying the final grade is selected, follow these steps to set the external grade column:
After properly configuring the Grade Center, and setting a column to serve as the external grade, the Grade Submission Tool may be used to export final grades to MyNIU.
Wait at least 15 minutes after submitting letter grades from Blackboard. Then, login to MyNIU to the Self Service Faculty Center to confirm grades submitted from Blackboard and post. Note - Corrections can be made to grades in MyNIU at this point before final posting. For more information regarding using MyNIU, click here.
Find more answers...
Are you looking for more information regarding the Blackboard Grade Center? Review the answers to Blackboard frequently asked questions as well as Blackboard tutorials. Also, consider attending one of the upcoming Blackboard workshops.
Last Updated: 11/15/2009