1. Add Assessment Activities

A new Gradebook column is automatically created for each gradable activity added to the course.  Therefore, if you plan to add assessment activities to your eClass course, it's best to set them up at the beginning of the course so that they can be included in the Gradebook. It is possible to hide assignments from students if you do not want them to have access to them immediately.

Gradable eClass activities include Assignment, Quiz, Forum, Glossary, Database, Journal, and more.

2. Add any Offline Activities

Some assessment activities may take place offline. Such activities may include: oral presentations, exams, participation, etc. It is possible to add these items to the Gradebook and enter the grades manually so that they are available to students and calculated as part of the course total in eClass.

For step-by-step instructions on adding these offline activities to the Gradebook, refer to the Adding Items to the Gradebook documentation page.

3. Organize the Gradebook into Categories (Optional)

A helpful strategy in managing the appearance and calculation of grades is to create grade categories, which can be used to group assessment items in the Gradebook. For example, a category might be created to group all course assignments or all quizzes. This may be particularly useful in setting weight factors of groups of assessments that have a different weighting scheme (i.e. drop the lowest mark in the Quizzes category).

For step-by-step instructions on adding and managing categories, refer to the Creating Categories documentation page.

4. Set the Grade Aggregation (Calculation) Method and Assign Weights

The default course total calculation in eClass (Simple weighted mean of grades) does not allow instructors to assign a weight for specific assessment activities, and most likely will not calculate the course total the way that an instructor intends without changing the way grades are calculated. 

If you'd like to assign specific weights to grades you must choose Weighted mean of grades in order for the grades to be calculated based on a specific weighted grading scheme. For more information on the way eClass calculates course totals, refer to the Grade Display and Calculation documentation page.

For step-by-step instructions on changing the aggregation method and assigning weights to items in the gradebook, refer to the Assigning Weights to Grade Items documentation page.