Mark Centre

A Mark Centre can quickly become confusing if a course is large and has multiple assessment items.  You can manage this by:

• hiding columns (from yourself, or from your students, or both)
• deleting old columns, and Total and Weighted Total columns, that aren't being used
• using a Mark Centre name to give the column a shorter, more meaningful name
• using Smart Views to only show you columns and rows that are of interest

To see a list of all your columns, including the hidden columns, go to the top of the Mark Centre and choose Manage > Column Organisation.  You can also re-order the columns from this screen.  Make sure you always click Submit after you have modified anything on the page.

Columns

Each assessment item in your course appears as a column in the Mark Centre.  Columns are created automatically if you are using Learning@Griffith to accept assignment submissions, or you are running an online test.  You can add additional columns for recording other details - for example marks for a presentation given in class.

By default you'll be able to enter one mark per column per student.  However the Mark Centre does have the ability to cater for group marks, individual exemptions, and for marks to be reviewed and altered at a later date.

Total and Weighted Total columns

These columns appear automatically in every course site at Learning@Griffith - sometimes more than once, if they have been picked up in a course copy.  The Total column automatically adds up all the marks across all the columns (unless you have chosen the setting to exclude a column from Mark Centre calculations).  The Weighted Total column can calculate a student's total percentage achievement across all assessment items in the course, by converting their marks into the correct weighting.

Both columns are only useful to you and your students if they are configured correctly.  If you do not intend to use them, we recommend that you change their settings so that they are hidden from users.  These columns are easy to recreate, so you can also safely delete them.  (See the section below on External Mark if you cannot find the option to delete the column.)

External Mark

This feature is not currently utilised at Griffith University. The External Mark indicator identifies which column is the 'final result' of a course and is used, at other institutions, for integrating the final result of the course with the University's mark reporting system.

The Blackboard system requires that a column in your Mark Centre must be designated as the External Mark, and this column is indicated by a green tick at the top of the column. By default the Total column is the External Mark.

• If you wish to hide the Total (External Mark) Column - see the 'Total Column' section on the Hiding marks page
• If you wish to delete a column and it is the External Mark, you must first designate another column to be the External Mark.  (At this stage it does not really matter which column functions as the External Mark, though in future it may be preferable to keep the Total column as the External Mark column).

Smart Views

Using Smart Views can make it easier for you to view your Mark Centre.  For example, you can choose to view only particular assessments, or only particular students (or groups of students).  For more information refer to our information on Smart Views.

Hiding marks from students during marking

It is common practice for teaching staff to release all student marks for a particular assessment item to students at the same time, instead of as individual marks are assigned.  To ensure that your settings are correct, please refer to our helpguide on hiding marks from students.

Grades management

Columns, whether created automatically when setting up an assignment submission, online test, or created manually as a marked column or calculated column, must reflect the assessment published in the Course Profile. All tasks listed in the Course Profile, must have a column in which the final student mark is recorded. This is in accordance with the University’s Assessment policy, in which students' marks for all assessment tasks, including end of trimester examinations, are to be made available to students through 'My Marks' on Learning@Griffith as soon as possible and prior to the approval and publication of grades.

It is imperative that the column naming standard and possible points (marked out of) is consistent with the assessment task published to students via the Course Profile, and moreover, the University’s new Grade Management System requires this information to match as an essential part in order to calculate student grades correctly.

Once you have organised your Mark Centre, it is highly recommended that you complete ‘Step 1 Assessment Mapping’ of the Grades management process early, either prior or during the commencement of teaching, to ensure your assessment and Mark Centre is setup correctly.

More information

• Navigating Mark Centre (Blackboard Help) Note - Blackboard refers to 'Grade' instead of 'Mark'
• Mark Centre Columns (Blackboard Help)