Grades | How to publish grades in Brightspace

In Brigthspace you may want to publish or hide both the final grades of your course and/or the partial grades of each grade item. You can both manually publish grades, set a specific time or conditions when students will see their published grades.

This article will show:

In Brightspace and these manuals you may find the terms "publishing grades" used as a synonym of "releasing grades". The same applies for "hiding grades" and "unreleasing grades". For consistency, in this manual we will use the terms "publish" and "hide".

How to hide a partial grade (a grade item)

You can manually set whether you want to make partial grades visible to students or hide them.

Keep in mind that whenever a grade item is published, all students will be able to see their own grades at once.

Navigate to your Brightspace course page. Then, in the green navigation bar

  1. Click Grades
Click Grades in the navbar

You will now land on the Grades homepage. At the top of the page, below the green navigation bar

  1. Click the tab Manage Grades 
Click the tab Manage Grades at the top of the page below the green navigation bar

On this page you will see the list of all your grade items. Navigate to the grade item you want to hide from the student view.

  1. Click the downward arrow at the right of its name
  2. Click Hide from Users
Click on the tab manage grades, select the items to modify, click more actions, select hide/make visible to users

Once you hide the grade item from student view it will be indicated by an icon of a crossed eye next to its name.

How to make a partial grade visible again

To make the grade item visible again, navigate to your grade item in the gradebook (tab Manage grades). Then,

  1. Click the downward arrow at the right of its name
  2. Click Hide from Users
visible assignment with crossed eye icon

The grade item will now become visible to students, and the icon of the crossed eye will disappear.

Now you know how to manually publish or hide partial grades!

Publishing and hiding final grades

The publishing or hiding process of final grades is different from the partial grades.

Navigate to your Brightspace course page. Then, in the green navigation bar

  1. Click Grades
Click Grades in the navbar

You will land on the Grades homepage. On the same tab Enter Grades navigate to the student grades overview, to the first column Final Grade.

  1. Click the downward arrow
  2. Click Enter Grades
click manage grades tab

You will now land on the Final Grades page. Here you will see a table with the student names and their final calculated and adjusted grades.

  1. Scroll down on the page and set the [number] per page view to maximum so you see all your students in the table
final grades table with student names and checkboxes at the left side
  1. Click the selectbox in the top row and first column to select all students in the list
  2. Click the Release/Unrelease button above the table to publish/unpublish grades

Now, in the column Released, last column of the table, the selectboxes will be checked to indicated that for these students the final grade will be released (published).

If the selectboxes are:

  • checked - grades will be published (released) in the Brightspace page
  • unchecked - grades will be unpublished (unreleased) in the Brightspace page

Make sure that you select all the students of the table if you want to publish the grades for all of them. If you have many students in your course, it is possible that you need to navigate through all the pages of the student list. You can set the maximum of students per page to 200.

right column of the final grades table showing release status

Set automatic release dates on partial grades

You can set automatic release dates for the partial grade items in your course. It can be useful to set the publishing date of the grades in advance. Keep in mind that this publishing event will take place at the same time for all students.

Navigate to your Brightspace course page. Then, in the green navigation bar

  1. Click Grades
Click Grades in the navbar

You will land on the Grades homepage where a table overview with students grades is. At the top of the page, below the green navigation bar

  1. Click the tab Manage Grades
Click the tab Manage Grades at the top of the page below the green navigation bar

Navigate to the grade item in the list you want to set automatic release date for.

  1. Click the downward arrow next to the grade item you want to modify
  2. Click Edit from the drop-down menu
in the manage grades tab, clikc the black arrow next to the grade item and then click edit

This will take you to the Edit Item page. Here,

  1. Click the tab Restrictions
  2. Click the selectbox Has Start Date
  3. Fill in the date and time when this grade item will become visible to users

(Optional) Set an End Date for the grade item if you want to hide it to students at a specific moment.

  1. Click the button Save and Close
in the restrictions tab, set the availability with the start/end date of the item

The system will return you to the grade items overview page and you will see a stopwatch icon next to the grade item indicating the setting of an automatic release date.

You can also modify the start or end date of grade items via the Manage Dates menu. You can learn more in the article How to manage dates.

Now you know how to set an automatic date to publish or hide the grades of your students!