Using the UTSOnline Gradebook
The recent 2004 survey of staff and students pointed to the UTSOnline Gradebook as one of the most valued, and underused, features of UTSOnline. The primary use of the Gradebook is for communicating marks and grades to students.
With privacy regulations now constraining the posting a list of student numbers and marks on a noticeboard, a practice which was both efficient and effective, teachers need to find other ways to provide this information to students in a timely and efficient manner. For most teachers the Gradebook can be just as efficient as keying marks directly into Excel, but with the added advantage that distribution happens automatically once the marks are released. Students cannot see other student results although they can see a class average.
Using the Gradebook
For teachers, the Gradebook is accessed via the control panel. A new assessment task can be added to the Gradebook by selecting Add Item. The IML site has a short animation on how to add student marks to the Gradebook.
Gradebook items can be used to record more than just marks. It could be used to record attendance at labs or tutorials, task complete/incomplete, text-based ranges (HD, D, C, P, Z) and short user-defined terms. You have a choice of whether marks are accrued across a number of assessment tasks. Individual tasks designed to provide feedback can be excluded from the total. So for example, you could use a series of multiple-choice quizzes drawn from a question bank that students can use to gauge their learning without formally contributing to a mark.
For teachers with Excel skills the option to upload and download grades via tab-delimited spreadsheets can make the Gradebook a very useful tool for managing some of the many administrative tasks that consume a teacher's time.
Accessing and enabling the Gradebook
To access the gradebook in your UTSOnline course area: Control Panel -> Gradebook.
If your gradebook is not accessible then you will need to enable it: Control panel -> Manage Tools -> Enable Blackboard Tools, then tick the Student Gradebook checkbox to enable the Gradebook.
Then you need to allow students to view it: Control panel -> Manage Course Menu, then select the Modify button for Student Tools. In Section 2 Enable/Disable Tools, select Enabled for' View Grades'.Learning more...
Teachers who are interested in using the gradebook but feel they need more assistance can contact Simon Housego in IML. Short workshops on using the Gradebook are offered by IML in the first few weeks of each semester. Details of these and other UTSOnline workshops are announced in Staff Notices in the lead up to the start of each semester.