Color Codes in Blackboard Grade Center

Contributed by Jane Nguyen, Instructional Designer I (CSE)

For many professors, Blackboard’s grade center is information central. By scanning the data therein, a professor can get a sense of a test or quiz’s score range, who is missing what assignments, and students’ running average.

These statuses can be eye-balled and columns can be manipulated to sort information in different ways according to what one is looking for. However, professors may also want to take advantage of a currently under-utilized function in the grade center – color coding. It makes the “eye-balling” process that much easier on the eyes because issues that need to be addressed or tasks that need to be completed can be made to stand out by highlighting them in colors such as yellow, pink, green, etc., just like actual highlighters.

To create color codes, go to the Control Panel in your course shell. Then, open up the Full Grade Center. From there, go to Manage in the menu bar at the top. In the drop-down list, choose Grading Color Codes.

You will see that Blackboard has three pre-set grade statuses: In Progress, Needs Grading, & Exempt. Next to each is a drop-down menu to change the color to whatever you prefer (blue, red, green, yellow, etc.)

Below the preset grade status settings is an even more helpful setting: Grade Range(s). The drop-down menu has options for “More Than or Equal To,” “Less Than,” and “Between.” This setting, for which you decide the high/low number criteria, allows you to highlight in whatever color you prefer (all color settings should be very distinct from each other) scores that fall within a certain range, or above or below a certain #.

For example, you can decide that you want all scores below 60 to be highlighted in light orange. This can be helpful if you want to reach out to those students and offer them extra credit, or an opportunity to revise, re-test, re-do, etc. You can also decide you want to highlight in light blue all scores between 60 and 80. Highlighting / color-coding does not always have to be for the purpose of offering students re-do’s. In many cases, professors highlight scores just to see in what areas students are doing very well, where they are doing average, and where they are doing poorly. This helps with present and future decision-making about course content, and/or it can alert the professor to what may need more review or clarification.

Once you’ve decided on the grade ranges you’re interested in highlighting and in what colors, be sure to click Submit at the bottom to lock in your choices. Once back in the Full Grade Center, you can, at the top right of the grade book, toggle between “show color coding” and “hide color coding” to turn the color code view on and off.

For more on Color Coding in Blackboard Grade Center, refer to Blackboard’s official help document, Color Code the Grade Data.

If you find yourself interested in utilizing this function in Blackboard Grade Center but have questions or need help, don’t hesitate to reach out to an instructional designer or learning technology administrator on the IDT team. We are happy to help!