The Blackboard Grade Center is a great tool for tracking student
grades, but it has a few limitations. Excel can be used in
conjunction with the Blackboard Grade Center to overcome these
limitations and expand your gradebook's capabilities.
Because Excel wasn't designed specifically to be a gradebook
application, it can be very flexible in accommodating a wide
variety of grading schemes.
Here's what we'll cover:
- Basic Excel navigation, data entry, and formula building
skills
- Exporting gradebook data from Blackboard's online Grade
Center into an Excel worksheet
- Importing Excel worksheet data back into Blackboard's online
Grade Center
- Building formulas to produce the desired grade weighting
- Dropping one or two lowest scores from a group of scores
- Using the "Text to Columns" feature to split combined data
into different columns
- Using the built-in Lookup functions to "look up" information
in one part of the worksheet and match it with other information
elsewhere in the workbook (helpful for correctly matching up
student information downloaded from multiple sources)
Prerequisites: Some experience using Excel 2000, 2002, 2003, or
2007 would be helpful, but is not required. Good working knowledge
of the Windows or Macintosh operating systems.