Easy-to-Produce Blackboard Grade Reports

Contributed by Henry Newkirk, Instructional Designer II (HSH)

As discussed in the previous article, we are at the mid-term point of the semester. Have you been thinking about a quick way to communicate with your students? Here is a way to engage your students' individually concerning their progress. With two simple clicks, you can create a grade report for any student or all students in your course; here's how. Go to your Full Grade Center and Select Create Reports. On this page, you will find six sections that will allow you to customize and generate printable, copy and paste reports for group projects that can be sent right from the Grade Center. First, let us review the customization section of the report. Here are the options available for each section:

• Report Header Information
• Add the name of the report
• Date
• Institution Name
• Course Information
• Instructor Name

• Custom Text: The instructor can provide detailed recommendations
• Users options: The instructor creates the report for the selected students.
• All Users
• Selected Users
• Include Hidden Users in Reports: This is a thought-provoking option as you can easily create a withdrawal report for students that registered for your course and decided to drop. Why would you want to do this? The option allows you to design a message to let those students know that you are excited about teaching, and perhaps they would consider taking your course in a future semester.
• User Information: There are five options available to add to the report.
• First Name
• Last Name
• Username
• Student ID
• Last Access
• Columns: Select the column information to include in the reports. Listed by default are the column names and grades.
• Column Description
• Due Date
• Statistics options
• Report Footer Information: Quickly design a customized footer for each report.
• Custom Text: This area allows the instructor to provide expectations and other requirements as needed.
• Signature Line option: Instructors may require the students to sign and return the report.
• Date of report
• Course Information: Instructors can use this area to input a limited amount of custom information.

The next step is to submit the report. The Print page will appear. You have the option to print or copy each page of the report. A quick way to get the information to students is to copy the individual student page report, return to the Grade Center, use the dropdown menu to the right of the student name and select Email; when the email page appears, paste the copied information into the Email and send. We would be happy to assist you in designing a customized grade report; please drop into one of our online office hours, or schedule an appointment with an instructional designer for more information and assistance.