Activating a grade book for a course

By default, the grade book is disabled in a new course. You can activate or deactivate it at any time. Once activated, grades are automatically calculated for each student, and then recalculated as needed.

To activate a grade book for a course:

Go to your course and select the Grade book tab.
Select the Configure grade book button.
Select Enable grade book.
Choose a grading method (see below) to determine how final grades will be calculated.
Specify whether you want to show grades to students. For more information on how the grades are shown to students, see Viewing student grades in a course.
Select Apply to apply your change. This will activate the grade book and begin calculating student grades.

Once you've enabled the grade book, you can map each assignment to a grade category and/or specify that certain assignments cannot be dropped. See Editing grade book settings for an assignment for more information.

Calculating final grades using weighted averages

The weighted category average grading method calculates final grades based on the weighted average of scores in specified assignment categories. There are four grade categories: Homework, Exam, Quiz, and Other.

To calculate final grades in a grade book using weight averages:

Go to your course and select the Grade book tab.
Select Configure grade book.
Select a grading method of Weighted average.
For each category:
1. In the Weight field, specify a weight. Only categories with weights greater than zero will be used in calculations. Weights should add up to 100 across all categories, but this is not required (normalized weights will be used).
2. In the Drop lowest scores field, specify the number of lowest scores that can be dropped prior to calculation. Note that at least one grade will be kept.
Select Apply to apply your changes and recalculate student grades.

A weighted average example

As an example, let's assume a grade book with these settings:

Homework category, weight = 80, drop 1 lowest score
Exam category, weight = 20, drop 0 lowest scores

Our example student has the following assignments/grades:

Homework 100, 80, 60
Exam 90, 70

Calculating the final grade, we get:

Homework category average = 90 (dropping the 60)
Exam category average = 80
Final grade = 88 (90 * 0.8 + 80 * 0.2)

Calculating final grades using weighted point values

The points grading method calculates final grades by summing up the scores of assignments in specified categories. There are four grade categories: Homework, Exam, Quiz, and Other.

To calculate final grades in a grade book using weighted points:

Go to your course and select the Grade book tab.
Select Configure grade book.
Select a grading method of Points.
Select the categories used to calculate the final grade.
Map each assignment to a grade category as needed. See Editing grade book settings for an assignment for more information.
Select Apply to apply your changes and recalculate student grades.

A points example