Anyone use Blackboard for submitting grades?

[mackattack]

I have a problem. The averages listed on blackboard are different than what the actual grade should be.

for instance, one student has 539 points out of a possible 680. That should be a 79 percent but it lists his average as a 92 percent?!?!?

What is wrong with this thing.

thanks.

[mike_c]

1. are there any missing grades?

Caveat: we use Moodle at my institution, rather than BB. But I turned off grade aggregation (or whatever they call it) because it nearly always confuses students. In Moodle, one can either ignore zeros (useful when assignments are in the grade book but not completed and turned in yet-- don't want to count those as zeros) or one can count them (useful when missing grades represent missed assignments) but not both. If you set it to do the former, you get results like you cited when students have legitimate zeros.

Personally, I use the grade book ONLY to record and display grades for each individual assignment, then download the whole shebang at the end of the semester and use a spreadsheet to calculate final grades.

[mackattack]

3. Thanks, I figured it out

When you start a new class the grade area already has a column for the average. I assumed that was the total number of points divided by the total number of possible points. That is general idea, right?

Apparently, on Blackboard, the "Average" calculated column actually calculates the "mean percentage correct". That is, it takes the total number of percentage points awarded per column, adds them up, then divides by the number of columns.

Why the heck would ever want that?!?! The best part about it is that there is no explanation of it on Blackboard. I found this out on a blog of some guy who answers FAQs on blackboard.

Ive been in BB all semester using courses that were built utilizing the AVG calculation and trying to figure out the problem. Now I know...but how many others dont??? Because if you use excel to calculate the true average and compare the 2 calculations some of the students grades are "close enough" (1% either way), but some are waaaaaay off.

I get it, technically their definition of average is correct. An average can be any arithmetic mean...but shouldnt the type average be noted....because the mean % correct is a specific type of average. I wonder how many realize it is not a points earned/points possible average....its actually an internally weighted average....

To get the GPA you have to change the "total points" column to a "percentage" column.

Students and teachers, always double check your grades.

Sorry for the rant but Blackboard does an awesome job of annoying everyday.


Thanks for your reply

[graywarrior]

2. We are being tortured by a "New and Improved" Blackboard and it SUCKS!!!!

[mackattack]

4. Do you ever had students submit things

via turnitin or whatever, and blackboard doesnt have that little green exclamation point saying an assignment was submitted? I am having that problem with an online course. I have to go through this weird backdoor way to find out if the paper was turned in because BB says there was no submission.

Bet the students wouldnt appreciate a 0 for their 7 page midterm.


Thanks BlackBoard 9.1

[RZM]

5. I've had this come up too

Only way around it is to calculate the grade yourself and rely on that. Usually Blackboard has worked well, but sometime it's buggy.

[Xithras]

6. Blackboard sucks.

That's what's wrong with it.

Of course, I'm doing freebie work for an LMS startup that hopes to seriously gut Blackboard's market in a few years, so I may be a bit biased