Blackboard

Resolved Client Suggestions Blackboard Grade Center Release 8.0

When planning the re-design of the Grade Center for the Blackboard Learning System Release 8.0, the Blackboard Product Management team reviewed over 250 client suggestions across all Learning System Products. Client suggestions for the Gradebook ranged from better commenting capabilities and detailed calculation improvements to additional data required when test and survey results are downloaded.

There were 220 client suggestions for the Gradebook and over half of them had considerable impact on the final design of the new Grade Center in Blackboard Academic Suite Release 8.0. This list provides the general themes or groupings of client enhancement requests that have been resolved in Blackboard Academic Suite Release 8.0. These are listed in descending order based on the volume of requests received by clients for each topic.

1. Improved flexibility for Gradebook upload/download and ‘offline grading’
2. Improved functionality for entering and releasing comments
3. Consistent calculation of grades and ability to create multiple ‘calculated’ columns
4. Ability to define and save custom views of Gradebook data
5. Improvements to sorting and displaying data in the Gradebook.
6. Improvements to paging and the ability to see all students on one screen
7. More instructor control over what information (including statistics) is displayed in My Grades for students
8. More flexibility in what/how student information is displayed in the Gradebook
9. Ability to exempt specific students from specific grade items
10. Ability to modify the default Grading Schema for all courses at the institution level
11. Improved tracking of grade changes and detailed grade history
12. Ability to drop lowest/highest x scores from calculations
13. Consistency of information and format of grades displayed in all “views” – including My Grades
14. Improvements to the integration and tracking of SCORM grades
15. Ability to break a Gradebook into Grading Periods for use in K-12
16. Ability to hide/show columns and students in the Gradebook
17. Inline editing capabilities and faster grade entry for increased instructor efficiency
18. Simplification of ‘override grades’ vs. automatically figured grades
19. Flexibility over what value is displayed in other tools as ‘external grade’
20. Ability to freeze columns and header row

Client suggestions play a very important role in the design of new features and the improvement or re-design of existing functionality. They provide Product Development with insight into how clients are using existing tools and what other tools are needed. There are still outstanding enhancements related to the Grade Center tool and Grading activities in general and we continue to receive more great ideas. We have already added a significant number of these suggestions to the Project NG roadmap and will continue evaluating and prioritizing as we release new and enhanced features.