End of Semester Blackboard Tip
By Ireta Ekstrom, Instructional Developer, FaCIT

Blackboard can get a bit slow during the last few days of the semester, as students flock to the system to check their individual grades, and many faculty log on while submitting course grades.  To avoid a bit of potential stress for those turning in grades “near” the deadline, I offer the following suggestion, which will probably also save you a bit of time in the process of entering grades.

Once all assignments are in and grades are calculated, I strongly recommend creating an archive of your gradebooks onto your own computer.  To extract the gradebook from your Blackboard shell, follow the directions on the Blackboard tutorials page by clicking here.  The tutorial you need for this process is “Download Grades,” and is found under the category of “Assignment/Grades.” Following the download, your gradebook will be on your computer.
To speed up your grade entry process, try the following.

• Print out the Gradebook by using Excel to use when entering final Grades. It is easy to check off each student’s name when the grade is entered and if you must leave and come back later, you will know where to start.
• Another method is to open Excel, freeze the pane and have the student’s name and final grade next to each other, then highlight when the grade is entered ( Blackboard’s Gradebook does not allow this feature).
• To freeze panes in Excel, place the cursor into the square below the top row of your spreadsheet and to the right of the name columns.
• For Excel 2007, click View/Freeze panes.
• For Excel 2003, click Window/Freeze panes. 

Personally, my favorite method is #2, above. You will find that opening both sets of information and placing them side by side really enhances your ability to get the job done. And Excel’s ability to have names and grades next to each other makes the task even easier.