Using the UTSOnline Grade Centre
The Grade Centre is the default online grade book available in every UTSOnline subject. It is primarily used by staff to record students' grades and marks and communicate these results to students throughout the semester. At the end of the semester, staff can download students' results (formatted as a text file or Excel spreadsheet) in preparation for submission of final results to the course coordinator, department or faculty.
The Grade Centre is accessed via the control panel (located in Control Panel > Grade Centre).
Adding, Displaying and Viewing Grades and Marks
For most teachers the Grade Centre can be just as efficient as keying marks directly into Excel, but with the added advantage that some grade columns are automatically generated and the distribution of students' results happens automatically once the marks are released. A grade column will automatically appear in the Grade Centre every time you:
- add an assignment submission area
- create a Turnitin assignment
- create a quiz or survey in UTSonline
You can quickly add your own custom columns relevant to your subject. So for example you can record class participation, results of in-class presentations, group projects and other formative and summative assessment tasks.
Teachers can view the entire entire Grade Centre for a subject and can then select which marks and grades will be visible to students and whether these will be visible as a UTS grade (P, C, D, HD) or as a raw mark or scaled mark. Students will see only their own marks and grades via the My Grades screen (located in Course Tools > My Grades). They cannot see other student results although they can see a class average.
Various guides for learning about these features and how they can be used are available:
Getting started in the Grade Centre: This four page PDF (428kB) provides short descriptions of common tasks such as entering and changing grades and marks. This is an especially useful document to print and keep beside your computer during marking periods.
Determining Final Grades: This tutorial from Blackboard demonstrates how to add calculated columns to the grade centre to weight assessment marks and how to total grades students' grades at the end of a semester.
Analysing Grades and Generating Grade Reports: This tutorial from Blackboard demonstrates how to use the Grade Centre to monitor student progress in assessment tasks.
Learning more...
Teachers who are interested in using the gradebook but feel they need more assistance can contact Simon Housego or Jenny Pizzica 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.