Synching your Syllabus and Blackboard's Grade Center

Course prep means double-checking everything; this is especially true for fully online or blended courses, where a single typo can dampen your professional credibility. Whether you're prepping a course you yourself created, or one you've inherited and are teaching for the first time, it's imperative you ensure the course syllabus matches the Grade Center in Blackboard.

A simple way to do this is to use the Column Organization feature of the Grade Center. To do so, access the Grade Center within a course and select 'Manage' > 'Column Organization.'

Blackboard will display each Grade Center item and provide a calculated total. Ideally, this should match the grading section of the course syllabus.

This simple check has saved me more than once, especially when I'm teaching courses created by other professors. Remember: If you change your grading and update your syllabus, you also need to change the Grade Center.