LMS Weekly Update: Letter Grade Scheme Correction and Much More

Posted on Friday, October 25th, 2019

Algonquin College Letter Grade Scheme correction

It has been brought to our attention this week that the Algonquin College Letter Grade scheme present on Brightspace was incorrect. By design, the Brightspace Grade Center does not round up percentage grades up, which caused some grades to be incorrectly displayed in Brightspace when the letter grade scheme was used to display the final grade. The grade scheme has now been fixed in Brightspace, and will round up correctly.

Note that this had no impact on official final grades – Students’ grades are correctly rounded up when using the College Letter Grade Calculator before entering grades in ACSIS.

Hiding Gradebook Columns

There are different types of gradebook columns in Brightspace, and each has a different way of hiding its content from student view.

  1. Hide Final Calculated Grade/Final Adjusted Grade columns – Click here for detailed instructions on how to hide these columns.
  2. Hide a gradebook column that it is NOT associated with any online activity (for instance, when you need to enter grades for participation) – While in Grades/Enter Grades view, click on the chevron for the title of the column and choose Edit. Click on the Restrictions tab and then on Hide from Users. You can also use dates to restrict the view of the grades for a limited amount of time.
  3. Hide a gradebook column associated with online activity (quiz/assignment/discussion) – As these activities are linked to gradebook columns, just hiding the columns in the gradebook won’t actually hide the grades from students. They still have the option to view their grades by going to the Activities menu and then to that particular activity, if that activity is still visible. Follow the steps from number 2., but also make sure you hide the quiz/assignment/ discussion, or have the grades set up as draft and not published.

Look out for more PD sessions on Brightspace Grades in the coming weeks.

Did you know?

As D2L is always improving the system through monthly system updates and system fixes, we are expecting that some of these current issues will soon be addressed. Meanwhile, please make sure you are aware of these issues:

  1. No Space in the name file – If you are trying to upload an image in one of quiz questions and you are getting an error message, make sure that there is no space in the file name.
  2. Rubric attached to a grade item is not updating the numerical grade – Users reported that when they were using a rubric attached to a grade item, the numerical grade was not being transferred from the rubric to the grades column, despite repeat attempts. Following investigation, the issue could only be replicated when the course was set to ‘Inactive’. The solution is to go to Course Offering Information (under Tools > Course Admin), set the course as Active, use the rubric to set the grade, and then if necessary, go back to Course Offering Information to make the course inactive again.
  3. Text pasted in a rubric (during editing of the rubric) appears as being saved, but actually the text is not being retained – Using “ctrl +shift+v” when pasting text during the creation or the editing of a rubric is to be avoid. Use “Ctrl +V, or just type the text directed into the rubric.

So You Think You Can Brightspace

Thank you for your interest in this contest! We received 15 submissions, and judging will take place next week. This will be followed by the announcement of the winning submission in early November, along with a showcase of the excellent work that was shared with us through the contest. Watch this space!

 

 


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