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Grading Tools

There are two tools that allow scores and grades to be securely and privately reported to individual students: PostEm and the Gradebook.

If you already use Excel or another spreadsheet program to record and calculate grades and simply want to distribute these grades to students, PostEm will allow you to simply upload grades from .csv file. PostEm also affords the greatest flexibility in data formatting: numeric, letter, and even text comments.

If you have used the Blackboard Grade Center to calculate weighted grades, you will find that Sakai's Gradebook has most of the functionality you've come to expect, in a more-streamlined interface. Dropping the lowest (or highest) grades and displaying H,P,L final letter grades are now available in the Sakai Gradebook. Other particular grading calculations, such as awarding extra credit, will need to be made in Excel or another spreadsheet program and imported back into the Gradebook.

First, you will need to determine whether either tool will meet your grading needs. If you choose to use one (we recommend you only use one), see the list of related resources at the bottom of the page to find addition help with common grading tasks.

This video provides an overview of

• The functionality of the Gradebook and PostEm tools 

Note: The video below contains audio. You can make it full screen by clicking the 4-headed arrow in the lower-right corner. Click the play button to begin.

Key concepts

• PostEm is designed only for posting, not calculating, grades.
  • You will not see it listed in the default set of course tools. To enable PostEm, go to Site Info > Edit Tools.
  • Use PostEm to enter letter grades and custom notations (e.g., absent, late).
• Gradebook calculates and posts grades.
  • Grade calculations, other than weighting and dropping low/high scores, will need to be performed outside of Sakai.
  • Only number grades can be entered in the Gradebook. These grades can be displayed to students as letter grades A-F (with or without +/-), HPL, or Pass/Fail. 
  • Importing grades into the Gradebook requires using the Gradebook Spreadsheet Template. 
• To minimize confusion and simplify, select only one grading tool per course site.

Related resources

Gradebook

• Create entry
• Display grades
• Create categories & weighting
• Changing the grade scale
• Sort grades
• Importing grades from spreadsheet
• Exporting grades

PostEm

• Quick Guide: PostEm
• Blog post: Provide prompt feedback with PostEm