Grading Discussions

Role: Lecturers

Discussions can be created and managed using the Discussions tool. Once a Discussion Topic is created, they can be graded using the Teach tab. For more details on creating and editing Discussion topics, please see the Learning Card on Creating and Editing Discussion topics in Blackboard.

In order to grade a Discussion Topic, you have to ensure that when you are creating the Discussion topic, you enable the grading option for that. Once a Discussion topic is made gradable, an automatic column is created for it in Grade Book.

2. Select the Discussion topic to be graded from the list of topics

3. Click Grade Topic

Note: The Grade Topic option will only be visible for a Discussion topic, if the Grading option has been enabled for that topic. This has to be done when the Discussion topic is created. See the Learning Card for Creating and Editing Discussion Topics in Blackboard.

The Grade Discussion screen appears.

4. Click on the Student's name. From the menu, select View Student Posts.

A demo student has been used in this example.

The Student Discussion Posts screen appears, displaying the posting for the topic, along with summary information on the number of new messages, the number of replies posted, and the number of messages read.

5. After viewing the posts and the summary information, a grade can be entered in the Grade box in the left frame.

6. Then click on Save Grades. This grade is automatically entered for the student in the Gradebook for the Discussion Topic.