When you create a Grade Category, Grade Item, or Edit the Final Calculated Grade, you must always set a Grade Scheme. In this article, we explain what a Grade Scheme is and how you can create your own Grade Scheme.
What are grade schemes?
Grade Schemes are arrangements that make grading understandable for the instructor and students on Brightspace. Brightspace calculates using percentages. A grade scheme is then used to determine the value of the grade (1-10, percentage, pass/fail, ABCD, etc.).
Simply said: Grade schemes make it possible to have a say in how grades are registered and presented to your students. You can decide if the grades should be changed to a symbol, text, or rounded up to a certain percentage.
The following guidelines assume that you have already set up your Grade book using the Setup Wizard. If you have not done that yet, please follow the information on this page before continuing.
Setting up a grade scheme
Grading schemes can be found by going to Grades in your navigation bar and then clicking on Schemes.
As you can see, the default scheme uses percentages. Should you wish to deviate from this, then you can click on New Scheme. The following screen will appear.
- Here you can put the name of the grading scheme.
- Under Symbol you can put the "name" of the grade (such as Insufficient/Sufficient/Good or A/B/C/D)
- Under Start % you can put in which symbols belong to which percentage grades (e.g. the symbol "Sufficient" is assigned when the start % is 60%, and "Good" is assigned at 80%. This means that any student with a grade between 60-79% will get a "Sufficient").
- Under Color you can put colors to go along with your symbols. This is optional, but it is a nice way to stay organized and see a visual representation of how your students are doing.
- Under Assigned Value you can enter the numeric grade you want learners to achieve when you evaluate them using the grading scheme. If you do not assign a value in the Assigned Value % field, the Start % is used as the default.
- Here, if you need more ranges, you can type in the amount you need and click on Add Ranges.
Let's say that we wish to create a Pass/Fail grading scheme. This scheme would be set up in the following way:
We have now set up a Pass/Fail grading scheme that will give every student with a score between 0-54% a Fail, and those with a score of 55% or higher a Pass. All that is left to do is to click on Save and Close.
We can now see the new Pass/Fail grading scheme under Grade Schemes.