This is a companion page to the "add a grade item to blackboard" page - dealing with a slightly different Bb scenerio, but each page is stand-alone .. I repeat the information needed.
In this page, I assume you are one teacher of several that are in a Bb course with different sections. How can you make use of the Blackboard gradebook if you only want to upload YOUR student grades, but not the others?
So, this might have limited appeal to a general web surfer - if you don't fit into this category, this page won't really help much. But, if you do .. here goes ..
Step 1) In your Bb course, go to the Control Panel
Step 2) Select the Gradebook
Step 3) Click the DOWNLOAD GRADES choice, and then select COMMA and submit.
Name the document whatever you want (it will probably end up in the My Documents folder, unless you specify some other location). It is always wise to start with a copy of the gradebook. Depending on how the gradebook is set up for the course, you may only have to do this once at the start of the term.
Step 4) Open that file that you just downloaded (you should be able to double-click it in Windows Explorer - it will launch Excel).
This file will contain ALL the students (your section plus others). Hopefully there is some way to sort the file to pull up only your students. If not, you could just go through and delete any row that doesn't have one of your students (again, you probably only need to do this once - to create a "blackboard-ready" version of the gradebook of just your students.
In this file, you can now add in your grades to just your own students. If the grade-column has already been created in Bb, then you'll have a particular column where you can add the grades. If not, you can just create a new column name at the top, and add your grades in (you'll be prompted to create the "item" once you reimport to Blackboard).
[So, at this point, you might have the whole file with only your students getting grades because you sorted it - or, you might have eliminated all but your students, and you have those grades loaded - for our purposes, it doesn't matter which case it is.]
But here we have to make an important decision:
A) If you don't want to keep downloading the new version of the gradebook each time, then you should edit out all students that are not your own! In this case, just keep adding columns (or using existing columns if they were pre-arranged), and you only are uploading your own students, so you can't overwrite any other student grades.
B) If you want to download the grades each time, and then re-upload after you have added your grades to only some of the lines {your students} - then you can leave all the students there and just add your grades. But, this is more dangerous because you are "uploading" blanks for other students that are not your own ... if one of the other professors happens to upload grades for their students during the time you are working on your own, you might wipe out their data! Choice A is definitely recommended!
Step 5) To be safe, save this file. You can use this as your gradebook for the term, but Blackboard can ONLY upload a .CSV file, so we need to save it in a particular format. [You won't be able to save equations or other things with this format.]
Saving this file in Excel gets a little tricky (Excel is going to pester us). Blackboard will ONLY accept a file like this in CSV format - so I start saving it that way (first image). Then, Excel wants to know if I want to replace the original file - sure, that's fine. THEN, Excel complains that this is a weird format, and am I really sure? ... yes - keep this weird format - say YES. Whew!
Step 6) Switch back to Blackboard and go back to the gradebook and select UPLOAD GRADES.
Step 7) Click the browse button and go find the file you downloaded/edited (probably in the My Documents folder?).
Step 8) [Assuming the grade column you are using already exists in Blackboard ..] Match up the Imported item with the Existing item.
If your column was a "blackboard-approved" column, then you just need to line up the two entries (in this case, "imported item" is set to OQS Password {the "grade" column in this example" and so is the "existing item"). Yours might be "L01" and "L01" or something like that.
[If you need to create a new column in Bb - see the next box - if not, skip to Step 10)]
Also, note that you can only import ONE new column at a time (existing columns stay, but new ones come in one at a time). Suppose you wanted to add 5 items/columns .... you'd have to upload, choose column, etc. the upload again, choose again, upload again, etc. [That is, you could add all the columns in Excel, save that file ... but then you would need to upload it 5 separate times into Bb.] It is quite the pain, but we have no other solution at the moment!
Step 9) [If you need to make a new column!] Look in the image above .. suppose there wasn't a choice for "OQS Password" under Existing Items - we would need to check the "Create New Gradebook Item" - here is the dialog we would see.
Step 10) [At this point, either your column was pre-approved, or you just created the item ..] Here, you will click the SELECT ALL button here.
But, here is the DANGEROUS part! If you are uploading the whole list of all the students - you run the risk of overwriting someone elses grades. If you have a file with only your students, then you'll see only your students show up in the list below, and their grades will be "mapped into" the correct column in the Blackboard gradbook, and the other students will be UNTOUCHED. [So, hopefully, back in step 4 you choice to go with choice A!]
Step 13) That should be it .. you should have the new column in the gradebook. And only your students should be updated ..
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Last Updated = Monday, 15-Jan-2007 17:02:27 EST Of the 43 people that have visited this site, you are the most recent.