When students can’t see their grades in WebCT
Recently, we’ve received a few questions about the grade book. Instructors were adding grades, but the students could not see them in WebCT.
There is usually a simple solution - most times, the instructor had not added the My Grades tool, or had not released the column. For information on resolving this, check our wiki for instructions.
Another incident was when an instructor uploaded an Excel file with a new column. The column was created in the Excel file, and so when it was imported, it was not recognized as a graded column. We had to go into the column settings in the grade book and update the settings so it was a graded column and numeric, not text.
The reasons behind some of these settings:
The My Grades tool is not added by default to course containers, because not all instructors choose to distribute grades in WebCT, and some non-credit course containers do not have grades associated with them. It is good practice not to add tools that are not used to a course container, and so adding My Grades remains an option, not a default.
Grades are not automatically released to students. This allows instructors or teaching assistants to upload grades over the course of a couple of days, but without some students getting access before others. If you have a large class, you will likely not enter all grades at once, so this gives you some breathing room.