Blackboard Vista: Grading an Assessment

PDF version of this document: GradeAssessment.pdf [221 KB].

Blackboard Vista automatically grades all question types except for Paragraph questions. You will need to manually grade an assessment if you used Paragraph questions, if you need to override a question score or if you want to add bonus points to a student’s overall score. You must be a Section Instructor or a Teaching Assistant (TA), which gives you access to the Teach tab, in order to grade assessments.

Step 1: View Submissions

If necessary, click the Teach tab (not illustrated).
In the “Instructor Tools” area, click Assessment Manager. The Assessment Manager screen is displayed.

Enlarged version

The Assessment Manager contains four tabs: Graded, Not Graded, Not Submitted and All. The Graded tab displays assessments that have been graded and are recorded in the Grade Book. The Not Graded tab displays assessments that contain partially and non-graded assessments, for example an assessment that contains a paragraph question. The Not Submitted tab displays a list of students who have not submitted an assessment. The All tab contains graded and ungraded submissions.

Step 2: Access the Not Graded Tab

Click the Not Graded tab. The assessments that have been partially graded or have not been graded are displayed.

Step 3: The Not Graded Tab

Notice the “Partial Score” column. This quiz has one paragraph question which is not graded. A score is displayed for the other questions.
In the “Attempt” column, click the attempt number, date and time stamp link. The View Attempt screen is displayed.

Step 4: View the Attempt

You can view the assessment questions and the student answers. Any automatically graded questions display the grade.

Scroll to view the first question (not illustrated).
The question title, question, student response and correct response are listed.
The “Score” area indicates the number of points the student received for the question.
The “Override score” text box enables you to enter a new score for the question.
The “Comments for Student” text box is where you can enter comments for the student.
Repeat steps 2 - 5 for each question in the assessment.

Step 5: Grade the Paragraph Question

Scroll to view the Paragraph question (not illustrated).
View the question title, question and the student response.
In the “Score” area, type the number of points you are awarding the student.
The “Comments for Student” text box is where you can enter comments for students.

Step 6: Update the Grade

Scroll to the bottom of the screen (not illustrated).
The "Graded Questions" area displays the score for the questions that were automatically graded.
The "Ungraded Questions" area is for the points you awarded for the paragraph question.
The "Total Score" area is the total of the "Graded Questions" and "Ungraded Questions."
NOTE: The points you awarded for the paragraph question have not been added to the total score yet.
If necessary, in the "Adjust total score by" text box, you can award extra points.
In the "Comments for Student" text box , you can give your student feedback on the entrie assessment.
In the "Audit log comments" text box, you can enter information about why a grade was changed. Only section instructors and TAs have access to this information.
Click Update Grade. The Graded tab is displayed (not illustrated).

Students can view their grade in two places, the Grade Book and on the Graded tab in the Assessments tool. In order for students to view their grade in the My Grades tool, you must release the grade to the students in the Grade Book. Another way for students to see their grade is to click the Assessment tool and click the View All Submissions button. If you specified to release the grade to students, the grade will be displayed in the "Score" column.