Manage Grades in Brightspace (2024)

Regular grade items can only be hidden and unhidden, to prevent students from seeing them prematurely. Grade items for final grades can also be released and unreleased:

1. Go to Enter grades and then scroll to the column with the grade item you would like to grade.
2. Click the arrow next to the final grade and then select Enter Grades.

3. Under Users you can select all students or select a few and click the option Release/Unrelease. Click Save and Close.

To quickly unrelease all final grades, click the dropdown menu next to the Final Grades title and select Unrelease All.

You can choose to make a grade column invisible to students, either because you do not want them to see it at all, or because you want to release it at a later date. You might be unable to grade all students in one go, for example, or you might want to adjust the grades after grading. To prevent confusing your students, it is recommended to keep the grades hidden until you can release all of them at the same time.

1. Click on Grades in the navigation bar to access the gradebook. You can also find a ‘Grades’ link in the Assessment section of the Course Admin page. Switch to the Manage Grades tab and edit one of your grade items by selecting Edit.

2. Go to the Restrictions tab. Here you find the options to directly hide the grade item from students, set a date range or to attach release conditions.

3. Make your preferred selection and click Save and Close.

You can now edit the grades for this item without the students seeing them. Do not forget to make the grade item visible again once you are done.

There are three main reasons to export Grades from Brightspace:

1. To Import grades to the Brightspace Grades through an Excel- or .CSV-file.
2. To create a back-up file.
3. To share evaluation results.

We have divided the process into 3 steps. For the purposes of creating a back-up and/or sharing results, only step 1 is needed. To import Grades from an Excel- or .CSV-file it is not required to export the grades first, but is recommended to avoid mistakes as Brightspace requires a specific format for uploading grades. To obtain this format, you can export it from the Brightspace course > Grades > Enter Grades > Export.

Step 1: Exporting Grades (to CSV or Excel)

1. Go to the Grades of the applicable course, click on theEnter Grades-tab followed by the Export-button.

2. Now, make the following selections:

• • Export Grade Items for:All Users
  • Key Field: Org Defined ID
  • Grade Values:Points grade
  • User Details: Optional (Advise: None. Extra columns will only create confusion)

3. Check the Grade Items that you want to export.Each Grade Item will populate a column in the Excel or .CSV-file.
4. ClickExport to CSV (or Export to Excel).

Only .CSV files can be imported into Brightspace. It is possible to work in an Excel file first and when completed, save the Excel file as a .CSV file through the ‘Save As’ functionality. However, some extra steps are required to prepare the Excel to Save As it as a CSV-file that can be imported in Brightspace.

Step 2a: Entering Grades when you exported a .CSV-file

Follow the steps below to enter grades into a .CSV-file and prepare the file for importing.

1. Open the exported .CSV-file in Excel.
2. Select Column A and click onData-tab to selectText to Columns.

3. In Delimiterssection, select Comma as a delimiter and click Next and Finish.

4. Enter the grades.

If grades contain decimals, the decimal separator should be adot (.)and not acomma (,).

5. Check the following things:

• The OrgDefinedId(=studentnumber) have a hashtag (#) in front (example: #1234567).
  To add a hashtag (#) in front: add two empty columns after the one with the student numbers, in cell B2 then add the formula =CONCATENATE("#";A2) and copy this all the way down to the last row where there is a student number. Column B will now be filled with data that looks like #StudentNumber (example: #4644581). Select all numbers in column B and, paste them into column C as “ Values” (without formatting!).
• The End-of-Line Indicator is the last column and the cells beneath are filled with a hashtag (#).

If a non-student is enrolled in the course, the OrgDefineId will be their NetID.

6. Save and Close the file.
7. Open the file in a text editor (Notepad for example) and replace anysemi-column (;)with acomma (,)using the replace all function (Ctrl+H in Notepad).

8. Save and close the file.

Step 2b: Entering Grades when you exported an Excel-file

Open the exportedExcel and Enter the grades.

If grades contain decimals, the decimal separator should be adot (.)and not a comma (,). Note that OrgDefinedId is just the student number.

• Now that we know the column names that Brightspace accepts for our specific grade item(s), you can either replace the first row in your Excel file with the first row as given by the Brightspace Export, or you can copy-paste the student numbers and grades from your own file into the exported file from Brightspace.
• Add a hashtag (#) in front of theOrgDefinedId(=studentnumber) (example: #1234567).
  To add a hashtag (#) in front: add two empty columns after the one with the student numbers, in cell B2 then add the formula =CONCATENATE("#";A2) and copy this all the way down to the last row where there is a student number. Column B will now be filled with data that looks like #StudentNumber (example: #4644581). Select all numbers in column B and, paste them into column C as “ Values” (without formatting!).

If a non-student is enrolled in the course, the OrgDefineId will be their NetID.

• Add a column named ‘End-of-Line Indicator’ as the last column and fill the cells below with a hashtag (#).

• Once all grades have been entered Save the Excel file as a .CSV (MS-DOS).
• Open the file in a text editor (Notepad for example) and replace anysemi-column (;)with acomma (,)using the replace all function (Ctrl+H in Notepad).

• Saveand Close the file.

A. Check the CSV-file

Once you have Entered the grades, you should have a .CSV file. If you open the file in a text editor (Notepad for example), it should look something like this:

The first line at least contains theOrgDefinedId, one or more Grades item(s) and theEnd-of-Line Indicator. All are separated by a comma (,).

The other lines have the corresponding values separated by a comma. The OrgDefinedId have a Hashtag in front of them. If the grades have decimals, they should be separated with a dot (.). The line ends with a Hashtag (#). (Example: student with OrgDefinedId:#1234567 gets a 6 for Gradeitem 1.)

B. Import the .CSV file into Brightspace

Please follow the steps below to import the .CSV file.

1. Go to the Grades of the applicable course, click on theEnter Grades tab followed by the Import button.
2. Click Choose Fileand browse to the saved .CSV-file.

3. Select Continue.
4. A page will be presented, displaying any errors that were found.
   If all is well, please selectContinue.
   If errors are displayed, please refer toIf any errors are found during the import(below these steps).
5. A preview page is displayed, showing the newly entered grades for each student. If all is well, please select Import.
6. After a successful import, the newly imported grades will be shown.

Please do not email Teaching & Learning Support any file containing student grade data. We will give you instructions on how to safely share your file in a way that will keep this sensitive data protected.