Creating a Gradebook Column

Any assignment, test, exam, or other graded work should have its own grade column in the Gradebook. Quercus will add a grade column automatically when you:

  • Distribute and collect assignments through the Assignment tool;
  • Create a Graded Quiz or Graded Survey
  • Create a Graded Discussion

    Note: A grade column may also be created when you create an External Tool Assignment

It is possible to manually create Gradebook columns for assessments that are in-person or do not require an online submission.

Step by Step Instructions to Manually Add a Column

  1.     Select Assignments from the Course Menu.
  2.     Select the + Assignment button.
  3.     Provide an Assignment Name (e.g., Participation) and Description in the Rich Content Editor box.
        Recommendation: You can attach a PDF containing assignment details in the Rich Content Editor box.
  4.     Enter the total points for the assignment in the Points field.    
  5.     Select the Assignment Group or create a [ New Group ] if the assignment will be weighted as part of an assignment group.
  6.     Set the Display Grade as box to Points (recommended).
        Note: Make assignments out of 100 points. Additional steps are required if you use Letter Grades. 
  7.     Select No Submission or On Paper (when an assessment is physically collected from students) from the Submission Type dropdown menu.
  8.     Select the Save & Publish button and the new column will appear in your Gradebook.
        Note: In order to add grades, Assignments, Graded Quizzes/Surveys and Graded Discussions must be published.
        Tip: You can re-arrange the columns in the Gradebook by selecting the Gradebook column heading and dragging it to the desired location or by selecting the View menu, hovering your cursor over Arrange By and selecting an option. You can also increase or decrease the width of any column.

Note: By default, the Grade Posting Policy for a Quercus course is set to Manually Post Grades. Any grades, comments or quiz responses will not be visible to students until they are posted. Instead, students will see a visibility icon on their Grades page and when they hover their cursor over the icon they will see the following message: "Instructor has not posted this grade".