Leveraging Your Gradebook in D2L
D2L’s Grades tool provides a series of features to create and manage your grade book. For a brief overview of the look and feel of the Grades tool please review the following video:
APSU Gradebook Guide & Resources
The Distance Education Department has created a comprehensive guide on using the Gradebook that is specific to our instance in D2L. Please use the Complete Gradebook Guide when setting up and managing the settings in your gradebook.
For an overview of each specific feature and element within the gradebook, please review the following videos:
- Gradebook Setup Wizard
- Manage Grade Items and Categories in Gradebook
- Enter Grades - Filtering, Exporting, and Importing*
- Enter Grades – Evaluate Submission and Edit Grades
- Manage Personal and Student Display Options
*The Mail feature referenced in this video is not currently enabled in our instance at this time
Frequently Asked Questions for D2L Gradebook
As a best practice, we always recommend setting up your gradebook to match how it is written in your syllabus. This means that if you use a points-based system there, you should be using a points-based setting in the gradebook.
For more information on the grading systems available for your gradebook settings in D2L, please refer to this article on grading system types.
When you have the option to drop ungraded items selected the system with default to exclude assignments from the final calculation that do not have a grade entered. This means you will need to manually input a grade of ‘0’ for all missing assignments.
When you have the option to treat ungraded items as ‘0’ selected the entire gradebook will show zeros for all Grade Items by default and the final calculated grade will incrementally increase as you input a grade other than ‘0’.
Setting up Bonus/Extra Credit opportunities can be a bit tricky in the Grades tool. To troubleshoot, we recommend doing the following:
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If the Bonus / Extra Credit is its own Grade Item in your gradebook, be sure the Bonus option is checked in the settings.
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If the Bonus option is checked and the Grade Item is under a Grade Category that only houses bonus/extra credit opportunities that equals 0%, make sure the Can Exceed option is check in the settings.
If the issue still persists, please reach out to the Distance Education Support Desk for further assistance.
Grade categories provide a way to organize and group your grade items into sections – e.g. writing assignments, class participation, exams, etc. – and create restrictions and conditions for grade items assigned within the category.
Grade items represent all the work you want to evaluate a student on in a course. They can exist independently in your gradebook or be associated with course object such as discussions, quizzes, and assignments created in your course shell.
D2L can automatically drop the lowest grade(s) in your gradebook when the Grade Items associated with this policy are assigned within a Grade Category and evenly distributed in weight or points value. Within the Grade Category settings you will need to check the option ‘Distribute points/weight evenly across all points’ under Distribution and then input the number of lowest grade(s) to be dropped.
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These warnings can be an indicator of different things:
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If the warning say that a Grade Category is not equal to or exceeding 100%, this means the sum total of the weights to Grade Items within the specified Grade Category does not equal 100% within it.
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If the warning indicates that the Final Calculated grade is not equal to or exceeding 100%, this means the sum total of the weights of Grade Category and uncategorized Grade Items does not equal 100%
If you have attempted to adjust the weights and the issue still persists, please reach out to the Distance Education Support Desk for further assistance.
Grade items that are associated with another course object, such as a quiz, discussion topic, or assignment, will be blocked from being deleted in D2L by default. To successfully delete the item, you must first remove the association in the course object.
Need Help?
The Distance Education Support Desk is the designated APSU support branch exclusively for D2L-related issues.
For 24/7 technical support provided by D2L, simply click the chat icon located on the bottom, right-hand side of your screen when logged into D2L to access the Virtual Assistant.