Using Excel Grade books in Vista

Why use Excel to manage your WebCT Vista Grade book?

• To keep a copy of student grades on your computer and easily accessible while offline
• Use formula functions that you may already be familiar with in Microsoft Excel
• To view and edit all columns, rows, cells at one time
• Data is easily manipulated in Excel and results of formulas are immediately available.
• If you don't want to use Vista in general but need to use it for student feedback, using Excel for your grade book is an ideal choice.

You must download the WebCT grade book to keep the column formatting so the columns can be imported into Vista when you’re finished working with the data.

You can access the grade book through the Teach tab once logged into WebCT. The Grades tab within the grade book is generally the default view and the view you want for exporting the grade book (Vista will export a file of whatever view you are in when you click to Export to Spreadsheet).

Next, Click the Export to Spreadsheet button to download the data as a .cvs file
Keep the default selections in the next screen unless you have hidden columns that you’d also like to work with in Excel.

Save the file

Find a location for the file and name it something memorable. Keep the .csv file extension on the file.

Step 2: Edit your grade book in Microsoft Excel

Open the .csv file you saved.

You can move and change columns and data but cannot move or change the User ID column or your enrollment and student accessibility to the course might be affected. Another thing that will sound counter-intuitive is to delete from the spreadsheet any columns you do not want changed. Specifically, delete any calculated columns (WebCT calculated columns) or the data will be static when you re-upload the data into your WebCT gradebook.

When you are done editing, make sure to keep the file in the .csv format as it is compatible with Excel.

Example #1
20 point test, but now 17 due to questions thrown out
You want the test to be worth 40% of the total number of points for the semester which is 250
What’s the formula you'll use?

Excel Resources:
MS Office Formula explanations - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HP052001271033.aspx
How to use Excel - http://spreadsheets.about.com/od/excelformulas/ss/formula_begin.htm

You can choose ‘Do not import’ for columns you know do not need updated.

Once imported you’ll need to click the View All tab to see any new columns you’ve added using Excel.
To show the new columns in the default Grades tab, go to Column Settings area by clicking on the button and where the row for Grade Column allows you to change the setting from No to Yes, do so. You can also release these columns to students while you’re in the Column Settings area.
Even if these columns contained formulas in Excel, they will only be Text columns within WebCT’s grade book.

Use your Excel file to work with formulas - if you overwrite the file with a new downloaded version from the WebCT grade book you will not have the formula’s that originally calculated your data.

Resources:
http://iwdc.ucsd.edu/excel.shtml
http://www.its2.uidaho.edu/webct/help_docs/INSTRUCTOR/gradebook/setup_excel_gradebook.htm