Organize Your Gradebook in Brightspace

Organize Your Gradebook in Brightspace

This tutorial explains how to organize grade items and categories using Manage Grades in your Brightspace course.

  • Remove unused grade items and disconnect assignments from the gradebook.
  • Move grade items into categories and change their display order.
  • Choose how category weights are distributed and resolve weight totals.

Watch the Video

Watch the video walkthrough, then use the written steps below as a quick reference while working in Brightspace.

Before You Begin

Complete the gradebook Setup Wizard before organizing your grade items. The video uses a weighted gradebook; the percentage examples below apply to that grading system.

For related gradebook guidance, visit the Brightspace Knowledge Base.

Important: If learners already have grades, changes to grade items, categories or weights may affect their results. Review any warning before confirming a change.

Step 1: Open Manage Grades

  1. Open your Brightspace course.
  2. Select Assessments > Grades from the course navigation bar. You can also access Grades through Course Admin.
  3. Select Manage Grades.
  4. Review the grade items, their categories and their associations with assignments, quizzes or other activities.

Step 2: Delete Unused Grade Items

  1. In Manage Grades, select More Actions > Delete.
  2. Select the unused grade items you want to remove. Items associated with an activity must be disconnected before they can be deleted here.
  3. Select Delete and confirm the deletion when prompted.

Check before deleting: An item without an association may still be used for manually entered grades. Only remove items you no longer need.

Step 3: Disconnect an Assignment from a Grade Item

If a grade item is associated with an assignment, remove that association before deleting the grade item.

  1. Select Assessments > Assignments.
  2. Open the assignment’s action menu and select Edit Assignment.
  3. Open the gradebook options and select Not in Gradebook to keep the assignment graded without a gradebook link, or Ungraded if the assignment no longer needs a score.
  4. Select Save and Close.
  5. Return to Assessments > Grades > Manage Grades.
  6. Select More Actions > Delete, select the now-unlinked grade item and delete it if it is no longer needed.

Remember: Removing the association does not automatically delete the grade item. Deleting the assignment is another option shown in the video, but the remaining grade item still needs to be deleted separately.

Step 4: Move Grade Items into the Correct Category

  1. In Manage Grades, select the checkboxes beside the items you want to move.
  2. Select Bulk Edit.
  3. Choose the appropriate Category for each selected item, such as Quizzes.
  4. Review other settings. In the video, Can Exceed is cleared for the selected items; use the setting appropriate to your course.
  5. Select Save. If a warning appears about existing grades, review it before confirming.

Moving one item: Open the grade item’s action menu, select Edit, change its Category, then select Save and Close.

Step 5: Create a New Grade Category

  1. In Manage Grades, select New > Category.
  2. Enter a name, such as Discussions.
  3. Enter the category’s Weight. The video uses 10% as an example.
  4. Select Distribute weight evenly across all items if each item should contribute equally within the category.
  5. Select Save and Close.
  6. Move the relevant grade items into the new category using Edit or Bulk Edit.

Example: A Discussions category worth 10% contributes 10% of the final grade. With even distribution, the items placed in that category share its weight equally.

Step 6: Reorder Categories and Grade Items

  1. In Manage Grades, select More Actions > Reorder.
  2. Change the sort order numbers to put the categories in the order you want. Other positions adjust as you make changes.
  3. Adjust the order of individual grade items within each category as needed.
  4. Select Save.

The example in the video uses this order: Quizzes, Discussions, Assignments, then Ungraded Items.

Step 7: Choose How Weights Are Distributed

Open a category’s action menu and select Edit. Choose the distribution method that matches your assessment plan:

  • Distribute weight evenly across all items: Each item contributes an equal share of the category.
  • Manually assign weight to items in the category: Set a different percentage for each item. After saving the category, select its grade items and use Bulk Edit to adjust their weights. The item weights within the category should total 100%.
  • Distribute weights by points across all items in the category: Items with higher maximum points receive a larger share of the category weight.

Select Save and Close after changing the category settings. Save any item weight changes made through Bulk Edit.

Points-based distribution: The weighting depends on an item’s maximum points, not the score a learner earns. Changing an item’s maximum points changes its relative contribution within the category.

Step 8: Check That Weights Total 100%

  1. Review any weight-total warnings at the top of Manage Grades.
  2. Check that the category weights, together with any uncategorized items contributing directly to the final grade, total 100%.
  3. For categories with manually assigned item weights, check that the weights within each category total 100%.
  4. Edit the relevant category or grade items to correct the totals, then save your changes.
  5. Return to Manage Grades and confirm that the warnings have cleared.

In the video, adding Discussions at 10% to Quizzes at 50% and Assignments at 50% produces a total of 110%. Changing Quizzes to 40% restores the total to 100%: Quizzes 40% + Discussions 10% + Assignments 50%.

Zero-weight category: The video also uses a category named Ungraded Items with a weight of 0%. Items in this category do not contribute to the final grade, but their weights within the category still need to total 100%. The category name itself does not make an activity ungraded.

Need Help?

For support with organizing grade items, categories or weights in Brightspace, contact the Educational Technology team.

edtech@okanagancollege.ca

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