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Grading with Blackboard and Excel

Blackboard vis-à-vis Excel

Author: Andy Anderson
Date: March 2002


Contents

Next: Calculating Grades with Excel



Student grades can be managed in a relatively convenient fashion using both the web-based Blackboard CourseInfo system <http://blackboard.amherst.edu> and the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet program, to take advantage of the strengths of each.


Advantages of Blackboard


  • The web-based Blackboard CourseInfo system <http://blackboard.amherst.edu> is a convenient and secure way to deliver grades to students.

  •  
    It can display student grades in a spreadsheet format, meaning a rectangular array of data that can be used in group calculations:

     
      Click: [Your Blackboard Course] List Control Panel
      Click: Control Panel List Assessment List Online Gradebook
      Click: Online Gradebook List Spreadsheet View

    Note: on Windows, the "Click" above means "Left-Click".

  • In Blackboard, student names are loaded for you, and one can easily enter new tests or other "assessments":
  Click: Spreadsheet View List Add Item

The result looks like this:

  • It is also easy to add student grades in Blackboard:
  Click: Spreadsheet View List Final Exam*

Note: you can quickly move to the next field on a form such as this by pressing the Tab key.


Advantages of Excel


  • Unfortunately, Blackboard is very limited in what it allows you to do with respect to grading:
     
    1. You can weight individual assessments and sum the result, but you can't otherwise curve them or perform nonlinear combinations.
       
    2. Blackboard also only provides simple statistics (see the "Item Information" in the picture above).
       
    3. Finally, Blackboard has no provision for graphical display, e.g. histograms of the student data.
       
  • These limitations can be overcome by exporting the Blackboard gradebook to Excel and using the latter for curving, advanced statistics, and graphical display.
     
    The results can be entered back into Blackboard for student access.
     
  • Note: if you use Excel, you probably don't want to weight your assessments in Blackboard.

Exchanging Grades between Blackboard and Excel


  • Blackboard can export its gradebook to an Excel-compatible format called "CSV" ("Comma-Separated Values"), and also import from the same on a column-by-column basis.

    See the Blackboard tip Exchanging Grades with Microsoft Excel for detailed instructions.  

Those who are unfamiliar with Excel may wish to continue at this point with The Basics of Using Excel.


Next: Calculating Grades with Excel

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