Navigating in the Inline Grading Experience

This helpful D2L Knowledge article provides a practical overview of how to navigate and use Brightspace’s inline grading experience within the Grades tool.

Relevant to: faculty and staff

This article contains information considered accurate at the time of publishing. Technology updates, changes in University security practices, and/or policies and procedures may affect the information in this article - updates to articles are scheduled on a periodic basis and will address any required changes.

Introduction

This helpful D2L Knowledge article provides a practical overview of how to navigate and use Brightspace’s inline grading experience within the Grades tool. It explains how instructors can access student submissions, evaluate submitted and non-submitted work, and use the Consistent Evaluation Experience to assess assignments, discussions, and other grade items associated with rubrics. The article also demonstrates how instructors can identify ungraded submissions, navigate rubric criteria, select performance levels, and provide criterion-specific feedback.

A key focus of the article is understanding how rubrics function during inline grading. It explains the difference between hover, focus, and selected states, as well as the visual indicators that show whether rubric criteria have been scored. Instructors can view performance-level descriptions and scores, select or deselect rubric levels, modify default rubric feedback, and quickly determine whether an entire rubric has been completed. The article also highlights accessibility considerations, including notification indicators that are recognized by assistive technology and additional guidance for keyboard-only navigation. Overall, this resource can help instructors become more comfortable and efficient when grading student work and providing rubric-based feedback directly within Brightspace.

To Assess Grade Items in the Grades Tool

1. From your course home page blue navbar, click Course Menu - Grades.
2. Scroll through your grade book to the grade item you want to assess.
   • Newly submitted, unmarked grade items have an orange notification dot on the icon, which is also read as an alert for assistive technology.
3. To mark all the submissions for the grade item, click the drop-down menu on the column header beside the grade item title.
4. Do one of the following: 
   • If a learner has submitted a grade item to be assessed, click the icon in the Submission column to open the submission.
   • If you want to assess a non-submitted (for example, to provide an incomplete mark), click the icon in the Assessment column.
5. With the grade item open, the Consistent Evaluation interface displays the rubrics associated with the assignment, discussion, or quiz.
   • You can quickly see whether a rubric has been graded using the information on the collapsed rubrics tile. If the rubric is complete, the collapsed rubric shows the overall level of the rubric, and if the rubric is not complete, the number of unscored criteria appears on the tile.

   • To efficiently navigate the rubrics in the inline grading experience, it is important to also understand the expected behavior of the grading experience in hover state (when the pointer is hovering over a level, but no level has been selected) compared to focus state (when a level has been selected and the pointer is hovering over either a selected level or a different unselected level). If there is no level under the hover pointer and no level has been selected, the level area is empty. The interaction of the arrow buttons at either end of the evaluation slider now indicates a hover state compared to a focus state.

   •  If the hover pointer is on a level, the name, description, and score appear in the level information area below the slider. Moving the focus to a level directly selects the level. You can also press Enter to select or deselect a level. In preview mode, the selected level does not change when you review other levels’ information. When the level is selected, a larger box outlines the slider level, and a check mark appears in the level

   • The level name and description of an evaluation level appear below the evaluation slider in the selected state, and the selection indicator appears on the slider at the chosen level.

   • When the rubric has been graded, the level information area displays the selected level’s information by default, unless other levels are in hover state in grading mode, or in hover or focus state in reviewing mode.

   • In grading mode, when you select a level, any default feedback provided in the rubric is also displayed in the Criterion Feedback text box. It is also possible to edit the feedback, if necessary. Instructors can edit feedback in Criterion Feedback using the Brightspace Editor.