"How to" Guideline series is coordinated by Helen Mongan-Rallis of the Education Department at the University of Minnesota Duluth. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions to improve these guidelines please me at e-mail hrallis@d.umn.edu.

UMD eGradebook Guidelines

[Notes by Helen Mongan-Rallis, based on ITSS workshop by Shelly McCauley Jugovich, February 13, 2007. Last updated: February 13, 2007

1. To get to egradebook, go to UMD home page and then type in "egradebook: at the end of the UMD url ie: http://www.d.umn.edu/egradebook
2. This opens a login screen --> login using your UMD x.500 login and password
3. To log out, you MUST quite the browser, as there is no logout command
4. Once a faculty member logs in, you will see courses that you have for which you can create a gradebook, or you can click on the link to create a new gradebook
5. When you create a new gradebook:
   1. the first box is for the course identifier e.g. educ
   2. the second box it for the course number e.g. 1001
   3. once you have entered the above, you will be prompted to enter the section number e.g. 001
   4. you can copy a gradebook from previous course, by selecting "use preferences from: and copying from a past gradebook. You can bring in an old gradebook and update and change it, rather than creating from scratch.
6. Gradebook is automatically populated for you (you don't have to enter students in manually).
7. Very important: Once you have made changes, it is very important to click on the "update" button.

Display options:

• Instructor display options: check any boxes next to the items that you want to see.
• Student display options: typically show grades (letter grade), total. It's better not to do grade based, but just point based, because it can be confusing to students.

General info

• Class alias: you can't click on and use this. It just shows the alias that you request outside of eGradebook
• Attendance: you can chance this to show whatever attendance system you want
• Attendance span: shows # weeks at a time that you want students to see
• The default assignment sort option doesn't stay as you set it (just displays the way you want it to be during the session in which you are working, and reverts to the default when you log out)(it will work on the new version)

Calculations

• Category weights: means categories you create are used e.g. assignments worth 20%, exams 20% etc
• Total percentage: if you select this, then you can set the cutoffs as %. If you choose total points, then you have to enter the numbers in manually in the cutoffs for the breakdowns.
• Cutoffs: you can customize this to whatever you want

Categories

These are just headings, unless you use weights. You have to have at least one category.

Assignments

• These need to follow some category. Thus, when you create a new assignment, it will ask you what category it goes under. You need to give it a value (points) , give it a description. If it is grade based, check it.
• Include in calculations: students see the heading and value
• Active: adds only what you have made active
• Value based on high: this is a curve (so A is based on the highest score).
• Once you create assignments, you can go back and modify them

Scores

• This shows the scores for each assignment.
• Scores that don't have the "active" box above them are active, and are counted in the total
• Assignments that have the activate box above them need to be activated for them to be reflected into the grade
• Tabbing: you can select which way you want to use tabbing when you enter in grade (you can choose this to be vertical or horizontal).

Reports

• This is like the student view of things. You see the list for all students.
• To see what individual students see, click on the "view" next to the student's name in the report list, and you will see what the student sees (students can see only their own grades, not the whole class).

Comments

• individual: this is what the student sees
• Private: this is a note that you write for yourself e.g. notes that you want to make about the student to document
• If you have chosen to use attendance, this does show up in the comments section on the student view.

Other issues

• Extra credit: when you build your gradebook, if you want to use extra credit, you have to add it within a category along with other valued assignments (i.e. you can't have extra credit as a separate category on its own).
• Export: you can export the eGradebook to Excel (so that you have a saved copy of the gradebook). Note: Because of FERPA regulations, you should not save this on a laptop in case the laptop is stolen. Rather save it to the secure university H drive or to Net Files (which is network space in the UM Twin Cities). Each faculty member has 5 GB space, which can be accessed from any computer on the Internet.

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