Gradebook Guide

What Is the Blackboard Ultra Gradebook? (Instructor View)

The Blackboard Ultra Gradebook is a centralized grading tool in the Ultra Course View that helps instructors create, manage, organize, and calculate student grades efficiently.

With the Ultra Gradebook, you can:

• Add grades directly into the gradebook for any graded activity.
• View all student grades in either List View (by items) or Grid View (by students).
• Create and manage graded items, such as assignments, tests, participation activities, or manual grade columns.
• Track student progress in real time, including late or missing submissions.
• Automate grade calculations using weighted totals, category calculations, or custom formulas.
• Provide feedback directly on graded work through comments, rubrics, and inline tools.
• Monitor course performance with analytics, such as submission rates and average scores.
• Organize the gradebook using categories, filters, and sorting options for easier navigation.
• Upload and download grades to work offline or import updates from a spreadsheet.

How to Access It

1. Open your course from the Courses tab.
2. Select Gradebook at the top of the page.

Gradebook Views

You can manage items and post grades from four main views:

1. Overview: A summary of student performance and general grading activity in the course.
2. Gradable Items: A list of all assignments, tests, and other graded components in your course.
3. Grades: A grid style view showing all students and all graded items side by side.
4. Students: A detailed, student by student view displaying each learner’s submissions, grades, and progress.

Gradebook settings

You can use gradebook settings to customize your gradebook to match your teaching style and course goals. Select the Settings button to open the Settings panel.

Grade Schemas

Grade schemas map assessment scores to percentages, letter grades or some other notation for reporting performance.

Student Performance

You can receive alerts in your activity stream about student performance and activity. You can set an alert for the number of days a student is inactive. If you’ve set up the overall grade for your course, you can also receive an alert when a student’s overall grade percentage drops below a certain point.

Select the settings button at the top-right corner of the Students tab in the Gradebook. Add all your preferences regarding when you should be alerted.

Automatic Zeros

You can choose to automatically assign zeros to missing work past the due date. If allowed, students and groups can still submit work after an automatic zero is assigned to improve their score. Then, you can grade as normal.

If you assign automatic zeros, your settings are applied to these gradable items:

• Assignments and group assignments
• Tests and group tests
• Gradable individual and group discussions
• Discussions
• Journals
• SCORM
• Manual grade items

Students Visibility

Use the “Students Visibility” setting to hide or show unenrolled students.

With this option turned on, students are hidden from these gradebook areas:

• Grades page
• Students page
• Calculation student list
• Gradable items student list
• Submission tab for an assessment
• Student Activity tab for an assessment

Item Management

On the Item Management page, you can configure column visibility for all gradebook views, including Grade page, Gradable Items page, and Overview page. Visibility settings apply to all non-student users, including instructors, TAs, and graders, for your course. The student view of any grading-related page is unaffected. If you hide a column from the gradebook, that column is hidden from non-student users but continues to appear for students.

To access the “Item Management” select the settings button and after you scroll down you will find it after the “Students Visibility”.

Then, a new page will appear where you can manage all the items.

Overall grade

The overall grade is a calculated item displaying a running tally of all the items you grade and post that counts toward the overall course grade.

When you select the gradebook for your course, you need to set up the overall grade system for the grades to be calculated according to your institution's standards.

At the settings tab you will find the “Set up overall grade” button. Click it and set up the overall grade. In order to set up the calculations you will need to select which grade system you will like to continue with. There are three options:

• Points
• Weighted
• Advanced

We suggest you select the “Weighted” option to calculate grades. This option calculates the overall grade based on the percentages of the assignments you provide. – Look at the following picture for an example.

The next step is to assign percentage values to grading categories and items for an overall grade worth 100%.

• Unlink an item from its category to weigh it independently.
• Unlock items and categories to let the system auto-balance their percentages.
• Exclude items and categories from the overall grade calculation.

Course Rubrics

A Rubric is a valuable tool in Blackboard Ultra. You can create one either from within an assessment or via the gradebook. When creating a rubric, divide the assigned work into parts and provide clear descriptions of the characteristics at various skill levels.

To create a rubric from the gradebook, go to the Gradebook tab within the course and click the gear button for the settings. Scroll to the bottom, and you will find the category for the rubrics. Alternatively, you can use the “Generate Rubric” button to create one with AI assistance.

On the rubric edit page, you can customize it to your preference. You have the option to change the rubric type into four different categories: “Percentage”, “Percentage Range”, “Points”, or “Points Range”. You can also add or delete columns, as well as edit the text within them. Furthermore, you can adjust the percentages assigned to each criterion. At the end, don't forget to click “Save”.

Accommodations

You can add accommodations for individual students, such as an exemption from assessment due dates or time limits. Use accommodations to help students progress in the course even though they may have difficulty with some requirements. To add an accommodation, go to the “Students view” of the gradebook. Select the three dots – More options menu at the end of a student row, and then select “Accommodations” to open the Accommodations panel. You can also select a student’s name to open their student overview. Then select “Accommodations”. When an accommodation is assigned to a student, a purple flag appears by their name.

Add gradable items, calculations, or attendance

You can add gradable items, calculations, or attendance directly in the gradebook. From the Grades view, select the plus sign between rows to access the menu. From the Gradable items view, select the plus sign between columns to access the menu.

Add items

Add gradable items to record grades for any type of activity that takes place outside of Blackboard Learn, such as field trips, observed assessments, or participation grades. You can also use gradable items to transcribe grades for assignments or tests completed on paper.

From the menu, select “Add Item”. The new item won’t show up on students’ Course Content pages, but they’ll see the item in their gradebook.

Add calculations

You can add a calculation, such as an average assignments grade. From the menu, select “Add Calculation”.

Add attendance

After you enter attendance from the side menu, you will be directed to the attendance page. You can use it as a grade if you want to. In case you want to deactivate this option please select the settings button and uncheck the choice. With attendance you can see the Overall attendance and todays. You can also change a student’s attendance by selecting a different mark.

Download results

If you want offline records of student answers for certain types of gradable items, you can download results as an Excel (XLS) file or a comma-separated values (CSV) file.

• In the Gradable items view, select “Download Results” from the four choices at the top-right corner.
• In the Grades view, select the gradable item at the top of the grid and then select “Download Results” from the choices.

The results file contains this information for each student:

• Student name
• Question number
• Question text
• Answer text
• Possible points
• Automatic score
• Manual score
• Grading status
• Additional content
• Download submissions

Download submissions

In the Grades view, select the gradable item at the top of the grid and then select “Download Submissions” from the menu.