Display Current Course Grades

The Final Calculated Grade (FCG) is by default hidden from students and has unique behaviours. It must be released as opposed to made visible, and this page will explain how to do so.

Brightspace is also capable of displaying current grades as a running tally, however some steps should be taken to prepare this for student display.

Custom grade items can also be created to display grades at predetermined course checkpoints.

Final Calculated Grade

Sharing the Final Calculated Grade is entirely done at an instructor’s discretion, is not required, and has no impact on the process of submitting Final Grades, which is explained in this article on the transfer of grades to BrockDB.

The FCG is hidden by default due to some calculation quirks that may be misleading to students without context. Ensure that there are enough grades factoring into the calculation to provide a consistent and logical denominator for all students. How this happens depends on Grades settings and more information can be found in the Grades setup article.

To make the FCG visible to students, find “Enter Grades”:

Open

Enter Grades for the FCG.

Select all students (pay attention to the students per page and view options in the bottom-right to ensure all are selected) and click Release/Unrelease:

Open

Select student names and then click Release/Unrelease.

Display a current grade by modifying the Final Calculated Grade

1. In Grades, go to Settings and select the Calculation Options tab across the top.

2. Set Final Grade Released to Automatically release final grade.

3. Set Ungraded Items to Drop ungraded items.

4. Choose Automatically keep final grades updated. If not selected, this could be calculated and then left in place until the end of the semester (at which point it could be manually updated again).

5. Save.

6. Click the dropdown arrow by Final Calculated Grade and then choose Enter Grades.

7. Select all students and then Release/Unrelease.

8. Save.

9. Return to the main Grades page to confirm that the eyeball icon is no longer crossed-out.

Students can now see the Final Calculated Grade in their Grades page and in the Class Progress tool.

Custom grade items

It is possible to create a custom grade item that can calculate the sum of other selected items, i.e. the cumulative achievement across multiple grade items and categories or an interim grade calculation.

Milestone Grade Calculation uses the maximum cumulative weight or points of the completed grade items as the denominator to determine a calculated grade item's score.

1. In Grades, go to Manage Grades and choose New → Item.

2. From the Choose a Grade Item Type options, choose Calculated (or even Formula for something more involved).

3. Give the item a name and then scroll down to select the individual grade items that will factor in to the calculation. This can be adjusted after.

4. Save and Close.

5. The calculated grade item will appear on the main Enter Grades page and can be controlled or adjusted in the same way as any other item. You may want to relocate it using More Actions → Reorder in the Manage Grades tab.