In the “Gradebook Categories” section, you can begin to customize the layout and settings for your course gradebook. Your choices will determine the layout and grade calculations within your course Gradebook. You’ll begin with your course’s grading policy and create weighted categories for each portion of the policy. You’ll finish by customizing the settings for each category, including defining its organization within the gradebook and setting the number of allowable attempts, lateness penalties, strictness settings, and the grading method (credit versus graded) for assignments. To learn more, watch the how-to tutorial video.
Before you begin, we recommend that you review the “What is a category?” tutorial, which outlines the importance of gradebook categories to your assignments and your students’ grades.
To close the tutorial, click the “get started” button or the “hide tutorial” link.
- The “Use category settings from…” drop-down menu should be preset to the last course you created or to the course selected in step 1 of the wizard. If you are creating your first course, Default settings may be pre-selected. To choose something different, click the drop-down menu and make a new selection. Options include:
- A previous course: this will copy the gradebook setup of the course selected. If you select this setting, you may skip to step 6.
- Default settings: this allows you to build a gradebook setup to which you will manually add weighted categories. If you select this setting, continue to step 2.
- Basic course: this pre-set Gradebook contains a single unweighted category called “Homework.” If you select this setting, you may skip to step 6.
2. To add a new category, click the “ADD CATEGORY” button. If you are not adding any additional categories, but wish to edit the existing category settings, click here for instructions.
3. Enter a name for the category.
4. Enter a weight.
NOTE: Category weights must be whole numbers between 0–100.
5. Adjust the Grading and Lateness settings for the category to meet your course requirements.
a. Grading settings: Number of allowable attempts; grading strictness on use of accents, capitalization, and punctuation; activate/deactivate enhanced feedback; set assignments to be graded or for credit only. For more details about grading settings, click here for instructions.
b. Lateness settings: accept late assignment for credit or opt to give no credit for late assignments. For more details about late settings, click here for instructions.
6. Click “Save Changes” to apply settings and add the category.
7. Repeat steps 2–6 to add additional categories.
8. Make sure the categories’ weights total 100%.
NOTE: You may need to make adjustments by clicking into a category’s weight field and entering an appropriate whole number.
9. Click “next” to move to the Summary step.
NOTE: You may return to the previous step to make changes by clicking the “previous” button.