Open Gradebook at the top of your course. It has several views: an overview, a list of gradable items, a grid of grades, and a list of students. A badge on the tab flags work that is waiting to be graded.

In the grades grid, each row is a student and each column is an item. Select a cell to open="" a menu where you can view the submission, add feedback, and post the grade. Use the filter to narrow the grid by student, group, item, or category.

Open a submission to grade it. Flexible Grading lets you move through submissions one student at a time, or, for a test, one question at a time across all students, which is useful for essay questions.

• Enter a grade, and add written feedback for the student.
• Mark up a submission in the browser with the annotation tools, so you can comment right on a paper.
• Record audio or video feedback to go along with your comments.
• Add private grader notes that only you and other graders see.

Grades stay private in your gradebook until you post them. This lets you grade everyone before students see any results.

• Post one grade with Post grade, or release everything at once with Post all grades.
• A setting can post grades automatically as you grade. It is off by default="" for assignments and on by default="" for new tests, so check it if you want to grade before students see their scores.

A rubric lays out your criteria in rows and levels of achievement in columns, so grading is consistent and students see what you expect. You can build a rubric on points, point ranges, percentages, or percentage ranges.

Create a rubric from an assessment's settings, or from the gradebook settings under course rubrics. Attach one rubric to an item before you grade it, since you cannot add a rubric to an item you have already graded.

A grade schema turns a score into a display, such as a letter grade or pass and fail. Blackboard includes schemas for points, percentage, letter, and complete or incomplete.

Manage schemas from the gradebook settings. You can edit the ranges of a letter schema to match your syllabus, and you can create additional schemas for a course.

The overall grade is the running total students see. Set it up from the gradebook, on the Overall Grade page, where you choose a calculation type:

• Points. The overall grade is the points earned out of the total points possible.
• Weighted. Each category or item is worth a percentage of a grade that totals 100 percent. You assign the percentages.

With weighted grading, you can also set whether items within a category count proportionally, so higher-point items count more, or equally. You can choose to drop the lowest score in a category, or use only the highest scores.

Not all graded work is submitted through Blackboard, and you can still keep those grades in the gradebook. There are two ways to work offline.

Grade offline work with a manual item

Create a gradebook item for work that has no online submission, such as participation, an in-class presentation, or a paper handed in on paper.

1. In the gradebook, on the grades or gradable items view, select the plus button where you want the column and select Add Item.
2. Give it a title, and under grading choose points, letter, percentage, or complete and incomplete, then set the maximum points.
3. Set it visible to students when you are ready, then save.
4. Type each student's grade directly into that column.

Download, grade, and upload

You can take the whole gradebook offline, grade in a spreadsheet, and bring it back.

1. In the gradebook, select Download, choose what to include and the file type, and save the file.
2. Enter grades in the spreadsheet. Do not change the column identifiers, since Blackboard uses them to match your grades to the right items, and each student is matched by username.
3. Back in the gradebook, select Upload and choose your file.

The simplest way to give extra credit is to award more points on an item than it is worth. If a quiz is worth 10 points and a student earns 12, those extra points add to their total in a points-based gradebook. You do this by entering or overriding the grade with the higher number.

A separate extra credit item

You can also create an item just for extra credit. Add a gradebook item with a maximum of 0 points and include it in the overall grade. Any points you enter there are added on top, so a student's total can rise above 100 percent. This approach keeps extra credit separate from your regular items.

You can grant course-wide accommodations to individual students, such as a due date accommodation so work is never marked late, or a time limit accommodation for extra time on timed assessments. Set these from the Roster, on a student's menu.