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IN > OIEI > ID&S > Step-by-Step Tutorials

Extra Credit

Blackboard doesn't have a built-in extra credit option, but you can use this workaround.

To grant extra credit in the Bb Learn grade center, a student must be able to earn more points than the total number of points normally available in the course. To do this, create a manually entered column that is included in your total points calculation. The column should have a maximum point value of zero. That way, any points entered into this column are added on top of your total points calculation.

    1. Open the Full Grade Center
    2. Click Create Column
    3. Enter a name for the column, such as "Extra Credit"
    4. In the Points Possible field, enter 0
    5. Click Submit

Example: Your assignments, quizzes and other activities are worth a total of 100 points. You also have 5 points of Extra Credit. In this way, a student who does the extra credit assignment can replace lost points with the additional 5 points, and a student who did not do any extra credit can still potentially earn 100.

For weighted columns, a bit more work is required to include extra credit. 

    1. Create an item in the Grade Center that has a "points possible" value of 1.
    2. Weight the item or the "Extra Credit" category so that it is worth 1 percentage point of the weighted total.
    3. Give all students 1 point in the extra credit item for simply being in the course, thus avoiding any complaints that only 99% was possible without the available extra credit.
    4. Then, give students deserving of extra credit additional points in the extra credit item corresponding to the number of percentage points increase that you desire to award.

Course Evaluation Incentive

As an instructor, you may wish to provide extra credit to students for submitting course evaluations. However, to ensure anonymity, you cannot see which specific students submitted evaluations.

Any student may click a "Send Proof" button after completing an evaluation that will send you a quick email from the system indicating that that particular student completed the eval.

Another alternative, which many instructors do, is to give the entire class extra credit based on the total percentage of responses. For example, if the response rate for your course is 75%, every student gets 5 points; if 85% or above, every student gets 10 points (you get the idea). This sets up some peer pressure among students to encourage one another to complete the evaluations.

If you do have students use the "Send Proof" button, you may want to set up an email filter to funnel those emails into a separate folder in your Inbox; this will help you keep track of them and will help you avoid clutter. For help with email filtering, please contact the ITS Solution Center.