Creating and Using Assignment Categories

Faculty can use categories to group related assignments and grade center columns together.

With categories, you can perform these tasks:

Filter your view of the Grade Center: For example, you can view only assignment columns in the Grade Center grid.
Weighted Grading: You can assign a weight to a category when you calculate final grades with a weighted column. For more information on this, see https://usahsedu.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/OEKB/pages/15400988 .
Create a report. You can create a printable report that displays statistics of performance for all of the columns in a certain category.

Default Categories

By default, these eight categories are created in the Grade Center:

Assignment
Blog*
Discussion
Journal*
Self and Peer*
Survey
Test
Wiki*

*if enabled

When you create a gradable item, it is automatically assigned to one of these standard categories. If you have different types of assignments or need a more detailed breakdown for your course, for example if you wanted to have a separate category for the Signature Assignment, you can create custom categories.

Creating Custom Categories

To create your own categories:

Go to the Full Grade Center and then select the “Manage” button at the top.
Select “Categories” from the drop down.
On the next screen you’ll see all the existing categories, descriptions if they have been used, and a list of the grade center items that are currently assigned to that category. Select the “Create Category” button to create a new category.

When you create new assignments or gradable items, Blackboard is still going to assign them to the default Blackboard categories. If you are using custom categories, you will need to go into the grade center and assign a different category to that assignment.

Assigning a Category to a Gradable Item

To change an assignment or gradable item’s category:

Go to the Full Grade Center and select the options menu (chevron icon) for the column/assignment.
Select “Edit Column Information” from the drop down.
In the first section of the column settings, select the new category from the “Category” drop down.
Click “Submit” to save your changes.