Awarding Extra Credit When Using Weighted Grades.

Question:

I use weighted grades in the Blackboard grade book; how can I award extra credit points to the student’s final grade?

Answer:

The setup for weighted grades requires that everything adds up to 100 percent. Ideally, you would want to have all of your regular assignments add up to 100 percent (example: 70% written assignments, 30% exams) and then add extra credit on top of that. The controls for weighted grades don’t give you an option for doing this, though.

Here is a work around we found at this website: http://www.blackboard.niu.edu/blackboard/faq/qa/weightedgrades.shtml

In the weighted grades settings make an extra credit assignment type and set it to 1% of the grade. Then add in one extra credit assignment worth one point. All of the rest of the work the students do for the course adds up to 99% of their grade. Everyone receives the last 1% by giving them a 1 in the extra credit column. For students that earn extra credit, you award them additional points in the extra credit column. Each additional point in the extra credit column raises their grade by 1%.

So someone who did no extra credit would have a 1 in the extra credit column. If I scored an 89, and I had done extra credit worth one percentage point, the instructor can put a 2 in the extra credit column—my score would be raised to 90. A 3 in extra credit would raise my grade to 91.

Students seeing warning about quiz questions not being saved

Question: When my students try to submit their quizes they take on Blackboard, they are seeing a warning that “Questions 5, 7, and 10 may be incomplete.”  The questions for the quiz are presented all at once, and the students have clicked save next to some of the questions.  What should they do when they see this warning?

Answer: If your students see the message, questions #1, 5, 8, etc. have not been saved, they do not have to go back and click save next to each question.  Submitting the exam saves the answers that the student has selected, regardless of whether or not they clicked the save button next to each question.  As long as they have selected an answer for each question, they can go ahead and submit the exam, even if they see this message, and all of their answers will be recorded.

When the questions for a Blackboard exam are presented on screen “all at once,” clicking save next to a question saves that one question only.  If the student were to have a problem (browser error, computer locked up, etc.) that causes them not to be able to submit the exam, only those questions where they clicked the save button will be recorded in blackboard.  So the “saved” questions only become important if the test was not able to be successfully submitted.  Find more information on this issue of saving questions here: http://iccbbb.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/student-exam-not-submitted-all-of-her-answers-were-lost/

The message about questions 1, 2, etc. not being saved doesn’t always appear.  If I had saved some questions, but not all of them, and I had answered questions since the last time I hit a save button, I got the message.  If the last thing I did before hitting submit was to save a question, I didn’t see the message.

Is it possible to change the default font settings in Bb?

Question:
Is it possible to change the default font/size/color in Blackboard so that everything I type shows up in my preferred font settings without having to select those each time?  I’ve been searching, but I haven’t found a solution.

Answer:
Unfortunately, I don’t believe there is a way to set your default font / size / color in Blackboard to avoid changing the settings for each thing you type.

The best solution I can come up with is to use Word to type up what you want to enter into Blackboard.  You can set the default font / size / color in Word and then copy and paste what you have typed into a Blackboard textbox.  The formatting info from Word carries over into Blackboard when you paste.  If you use the shortcut keys for copying and pasting, this can be done fairly efficiently.  CTRL + X is the Keyboard shortcut for CUT, CTRL + C is COPY, and CTRL + V is PASTE.  [NOTE: this method only works if you are able to use Blackboard's visual textbox editor, which is not available in all browsers.]

Student exam not submitted, all of her answers were lost…

Question:
A student contacted her instructor saying that she had completed an exam in Blackboard and then had some trouble with their internet connection when they tried to submit the exam.  When the instructor checked the student’s exam in Blackboard, it showed that she was locked out of the exam and had scored a zero by begining the exam and never submitting any answers.  None of her answers had been recorded in Blackboard. 

Answer:
If you set up your Blackboard exam so that all of the questions are presented at once, on one page, the student’s responses are not automatically saved as they go.  If the browser window with the exam in it is closed before the exam has been submitted, the student’s work will be lost.

There is a save button next to each question when exam questions are presented all at once.   When the student clicks that save button, the answer for that question is saved in blackboard.  If for some reason, at the end of the exam, the exam wasn’t able to be submitted, answers that were not saved are lost, and answers that were saved can be viewed and graded by the instructor.

If you set up your exam so that one question is presented to a student on the screen at a time, each question is saved as the students progress to the next question.  If a student weren’t able to submit their exam in the end for some reason, their answers will have been saved, and can be viewed and graded by the instructor.

If you choose the “Force Completion” option when you are setting up your exam, there isn’t any way to allow a student back in to continue an exam that they partially completed.  You can let them take the test again, but you have to clear their previous attempt before they can start a new one.  This clears out the saved answers from their previous attempt, and they have to start the test from the beginning.

It is possible to lose internet connectivity and successfully submit an exam when the internet connection has been reestablished.  The important thing is that the browser stay open, and that the student doesn’t browse away from the exam. 

Blackboard logs out users who have been inactive for more than 3 hours.  Clicking an answer’s option button on an exam doesn’t count as activity.  Clicking Save on a question, or moving to the next question on an exam presented one question at a time counts as activity.

For lengthy Blackboard exams, you might consider breaking them up into several smaller exams.  Instead of a 100 question exam 1, have four separate 25 question exams, (exam 1 – part 1, exam 1 – part 2, etc.).  That way, if a student doesn’t submit an exam properly, and didn’t save any of their work, they have only messed up on a portion of the exam, instead of the whole thing.

New Blog for ICC Blackboard Users

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