Creating Gradebook Items and Categories - Brightspace Instructor Help

In Brightspace, you can create gradebook items through the Manage Grades area, or create grade items as you create activities such as Quizzes, Assignment Dropboxes, and Discussions. You can also create categories which help with the organization and calculation of your gradebook items.

Gradebook Categories
Grading Options
Drop the Lowest Quiz Score from a Grade Category

Gradebook Categories

Use gradebook categories to group related grade items into sections. For example, you could have separate categories for Assignments, Quizzes, Case Studies, Participation, Discussions, and so on. When grade items are grouped together in a category, you can distribute points equally across all grade items and drop the highest or lowest item in the group.

On the Manage Grades page, select Category from the New button dropdown.
Type a Name for the category.
If you want, enter a Short Name to display in the gradebook.
If you want, enter a Description of the category.
- Select the Allow users to view description check box if you want to make the category description available to users.
Set additional Grading options as required. Grading Options will vary depending on what Grading System you have selected. See the Table below for more detailed information on each option.
Set Display options as desired. You can choose to display the Class Average or Grade Distribution to users.
Click Save and Close, or to create another category, click Save and New.

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Grading Options

Option	Procedure
Allow users’ grades to exceed the maximum value for the category	Select the Can Exceed checkbox. Points system example: You create an “Assignments” category that contains two grade items: A1 and A2. Both assignments are out of 10 points and can exceed the maximum points specified. Frank Catcher receives 12/10 and 9/10 on the grade items. Weighted system example: You create an “Assignments” category that contains two grade items: A1 and A2. Both assignments are worth 50% of the category and can exceed the weight specified. Frank Catcher receives 100% on A1 and 110% on A2. Frank receives 105% in the Assignments category.
Exclude items in the category from the final grade calculations	Select either: 0% in the Weight field in the weighted system. Exclude from Final Grade Calculation in the points system.
Distribution of weights and points for grade items in the category	For the points or formula system: Distribute points across all items then enter the Points per item. Choose this option if you wish to distribute points evenly by item across the category, regardless of the maximum points available for each item individually. For the weighted system select one of: Manually assign weight to items in the category Calculating and setting item weights enables you to control the weighting of individual items that belong to a weighted category. Distribute weights by points across all items in the category Uses the points of individual, non-bonus grade items to determine the relative weighting of each item out of 100%. Distribute weight evenly across all items Gives all grade items equal weighting in the weighted category regardless of the number of points the individual item is out of.
Drop the highest or lowest grade item in a category	Enter the number of items to drop in either: Number of highest non-bonus items to drop for each user Number of lowest non-bonus items to drop for each user Note: Grades must be distributed evenly to use this option and you cannot drop bonus items
Change what users see for this category from your standard display settings	Select or clear: Display class average to users Display grade distribution to users

Drop the Lowest Quiz Score from a Grade Category

You might wish to drop the lowest grade out of a series of items for each student. For example, dropping the lowest quiz grade out of a set of 9 quizzes. You can set up your grade book so that this is done automatically. 

There are several conditions that must be met: 

You must have your applicable items in a category. 
All items must have the same weight/max points.

You cannot have any extra credit items in the category.

If you do drop the lowest grade(s) we recommend showing the Calculated Weight (Weightings) column in the User Report as this displays to students which items have been dropped. The column is visible by default. 

To drop a Grade from a Grade Category 

Go to Grades from My Tools.

Click on the Category heading. You should now see Edit Category in the upper left in big letters.

Scroll down to Distribution

Select Distribute weight evenly across all items

Change number to 1 for lowest non-bonus items to drop for each user

 Click Save and Close