How do I add an assessment in Gradebook?

It's quick and easy to add an assessment and enter grades directly within Gradebook. The green "Add Assessment" button will become visible as soon as you make selections for course, sections, and grading term. If you're interested in syncing assessments from an LMS, click here.

Creating an Assessment

When you add an assessment directly from Gradebook, the first thing to remember is that the assessment will be created for the course and sections that you've already selected in Gradebook.

For example, if your Gradebook is configured to show you one section of Geometry, you can only create an assessment for that section of Geometry. It's not possible to create an assessment for Spanish until you've chosen Spanish from the "Course" dropdown menu. Along these lines, if you want your assessment to be for all sections of Geometry, you'll need to make sure that all Geometry sections are chosen in the "Section" menu before clicking the "Add Assessment" button.

The reason for this restriction is to ensure that your assessment is immediately visible in Gradebook, as it's configured on your screen.

There are similar restrictions on the "Date" and "Assessment Type" fields. Here's some more information about the fields available to you.

• Name – required. Give your assessment a descriptive name that's easy to remember.
• Date – required. Restricted to dates that fall within the grading term you've chosen in the "Term" menu.
• Staff – defaults to you (if possible), but you can choose another staff member or leave this field blank.
• Assessment Type – required. Restricted to assessment types that count toward course grades, as determined by the course's grading methodology. (Exception: you can use the Google Classroom integration to sync in assessments that don't count for grades.)
• Standard – tie your assessment to one of the course standards. Required when creating an assessment from the "Standards" view.
• Required – are all students expected to take this assessment? Grades may be negatively impacted for kids who don't have results on a required assessment (depending on your "Exclude Missing Scores From Grade" setting; see a flow chart of how various settings affect grades here).
• Enter Grades by Level – choose "Yes" if you prefer to select grade levels (B+, C, Mastery, etc.) instead of logging student results as a percentage.

When you create an assessment in Gradebook, you will be creating a one-question assessment. This makes it easy to quickly enter results for students. If you want to enter a multi-question assessment, or want to take advantage of some of the additional options available on the full Add Assessment page, click the "Add multi-question assessment" link in the bottom left. You'll be brought to the Add Assessment page and any menu selections you've already made will carry over.

If you want to continue creating a one-question assessment, you'll see the "Save" button become accessible once you've made all the required selections.

Entering Results

Once you save your assessment, you'll see it appear in your Gradebook. It will be "open" meaning that you can start entering student results right away. Use the "Fill Down" arrow to copy a score down to students listed below, or move through the list by using the "Tab", "Enter" or arrow keys, or just by clicking.

If you choose to enter student grades by level, you'll be able to select the levels that are available to your course's default grading scale set. 

Additional options that are available at all times are "Missing" and "Excluded". "Missing" means that the student does not have any results for a particular assessment, but s/he should have results. "Excluded" means that the student is not responsible for taking this assessment, and this assessment will not count towards or against him/her. In addition to these two student status options, you can choose to fill a score down to other students. This feature is most helpful when all (or most) students get the same grade on an assessment. Enter in the first student's result and then fill it down to all others, afterward changing any few students who earned a different result.

You may also notice some completely blank cells. These cells mean that the student is not listed on the assessment at all – neither "Missing" nor "Excused".

When you've finished entering your student results, click the green disk icon () to save your changes. You can also click the red X if you want to discard your changes. Note that your work will not be saved if you do not confirm the changes with the green disk icon. If you navigate away from Gradebook, refresh the page, or open another assessment to edit scores, your changes will be lost.

You can also edit all assessments for a particular student. Click on the pencil icon next to his/her name. Read more about this here.