The Calculation Options setup for the Brightspace gradebook determine how items and categories are used to calculate grades for students. For setting up individual items and categories, please see [Gradebook Setup - Items and Categories]
In this article:
Setup Wizard and Calculation Options
To access the Grades tool in Brightspace, go to Assessments => Grades.
For a course with no grade items, you will see the Grade Setup Wizard. The default list of settings for new courses is displayed. To start the setup wizard, click the blue "Start" button at the bottom of the screen.
At each screen choose your options (or accept the defaults) and click continue. The setup wizard can be accessed again, by choosing "Setup Wizard" at the top of the grades tool.
You can also set the different options by going to Settings in the grades tool. Click from Grades, click Settings, and then Calculation Options to access the items described below.
Points vs. Weighted Grading Systems
There are two main ways to calculate the gradebook: points and weighted.
Points
In points based grading, a student's final grade is determined by points earned / points possible. Each grade item has an assigned point value. If a student earns 450/500 points, they will receive a 90% in the course.
A points-based gradebook is the default for all new Brightspace courses, and has the advantage of being easy to calculate.
Weighted
In a weighted gradebook, all items have points as well as weights. Typically a weighted gradebook is set up to use categories. This allows different assignment types to have different impacts on the total grade.
An example of a weighted gradebook:
- Homework = 40%
- Quizzes = 20%
- Final Exam = 40%
In this case: 40% + 20% + 40% = 100%. A weighted gradebook will need to add up to 100% for accurate scores — the number of points total do not matter.
In our example: a student scoring 80% on homework, 90% on quizzes, and 70% on the final exam would have a final grade of 78% (0.4 * 80) + (0.2 * 90) + (0.4 * 70). 90) + (0.4 * 70).
Ungraded Items
There are two ways the gradebook will calculate ungraded items:
Drop Ungraded Items
The default setting is to drop ungraded items from the grade calculation. Items with no score entered will not count for or against the student. This is the setting that most instructors and students expect.
Please note: that missing assignments require the instructor to give a manual grade of 0 for correct grade calculation. Some graded activities can be automatically set as 0 when a due date has passed, please see the next section.
Treat Ungraded Items as 0
This setting sets all scores to 0, until a score is entered. If your course has a set number of points, (say 1000), this can be a useful setting to help students determine their current standing against a fixed number of points.
Please note: Many students have not encountered this grading style before and might be concerned seeing many grade items with a 0.
Automatic Zero
A newer feature is the ability to apply a 0 to missing assignments. This setting works in conjunction with Drop Ungraded Items above.
Please note: Changes to this setting only take effect on assessments with future due dates. Also, discussions do not have Due Dates (only End Dates) and so this setting does not apply to them. Most courseware (McGraw Hill Connect, Pearson, etc.) will have a setting to manage incomplete assignments on their own platform.