Hiding All Grades from the Students View

Do you ever wonder if there is a quick way to hide ALL the grades from your students in one Brightspace course?

Unfortunately, Brightspace does not have a quick way to make the gradebook unavailable to your students, with a click of a button, but for sure you have the option to temporarily restrict your students’ access to their grades when there is a valid reason to do so.

This article describes the steps you need to take in order to make sure you hide all the areas where your students might be able to view their grades.

As some grades can be accessed by your students from different areas of the course, you will need to follow a few steps in order to ensure you restrict access to all grades.

Step 1: First, you need to hide the grade items/ gradebook columns in the gradebook.

You have the option to hide each column, one by one OR hide all of them at the same time. 

Note that the Final Calculated Grade and the Final Adjusted Grade columns require different steps, described in Step 2.

You have two options for this action:

• Option 1: Hide grade items/gradebook columns one by one – – From Grades/Enter Grades view, click on the chevron for the title of the column and choose Edit. Click on the Restrictions tab and then on Hide from Users. You can also use dates to restrict the view of the grades for a limited amount of time.

• Option 2: Hide All grade items/gradebook columns at the same time – – From Grades/Manage Grades select all the columns you need to hide and then click on the Hide from Users option, under the More Actions button.

Do NOT select the Final Calculated Grade and the Final Adjusted Grade columns, as you will get an error message if you are attempting to hide them using the steps described above.

Step 2: Hide the Final Calculated Grade or the Final Adjusted Grade.

You will need to make sure one of these two columns (depending on which one you have set up as having the final grades displayed) is hidden as well.

From Grades/Manage Grades, click on the chevron (1) and select the Enter Grades option (2).

On the next screen, make sure that you have all the students displayed on one page, by scrolling down at the bottom and choosing a different number per page. Then select all students (3) and click on the Release/Unreleased button (4). The checkboxes under the Released column will reflect the new action (5). Click on Save and Close (6).

Step 3: Hide the gradable activities (Quizzes, Assignments, and Discussions)

As these activities are usually linked to gradebook columns, just hiding the columns in the gradebook won’t actually hide the grades from students, as they still have the option to view their grades by going to the Activities menu and then to that particular activity, if that activity is still available. 

Hide a Quiz

Go to Activities/Quizzes and select the quiz you would like to hide.

Hide an Assignment

Go to Activities/Assignments and select the assignment you would like to hide.

Hide a Discussion/Topic

Go to Activities/Discussions and select the discussion forum/topic you would like to hide.