To perform a Bear Tracks export, your gradebook must be set up and you need to have a column where the students' final grades have been calculated. This column can be any column in the course, i.e., it does not need to be the 'course total' column.

The final grade does not need to be displayed as a letter grade as you will select the column to be used to calculate the final letter grades during the export process.

If the column with the final score for your students is numeric, the final letter grades will get calculated automatically during the export based on the letter grade boundary distribution set up for your course. If you have not set letter grade boundaries, you must do so using the following article: Setting Letter Grade Boundaries.

If instructors are using Excel to maintain grades outside of eClass and are making changes to their student list based on changes to the Bear Tracks roster throughout the term, please be aware that due to differences in the underlying database storage solutions, there may be slight differences in the default alphabetic sort order of student names. For this reason, instructors should avoid copy-pasting values between spreadsheets using the two different systems. If such a merge is required into a spreadsheet outside eClass, instructors should ensure that both sheets are sorted on student ID number instead of the name before pasting or (preferably) import values between the two spreadsheets using the CCID or student ID number as a key value. 

Also please note that as of December 2022, Bear Tracks no longer accepts Excel files when uploading grades. Instructors should export eClass grades using the Bear Tracks format (as set up below) or as plain text .csv files.

Gradebooks exported as Excel files will not upload into Bear Tracks. Instructors should also ensure to save files as .csv (instead of native Excel file formats (.xlx or .xlxs) if they are using Excel on their local machine to store or adjust grades files.

To export grades in Bear Tracks format:

1. Click on Grades in the left navigation panel then select Export:
   
   
   
   
   
2. Select Bear Tracks Grade Export:
   
   
   
   
   
3. Selecting Bear Tracks Grade Export will open the options page for the export.
   
   
4. If you want to use a column other than the Course total to calculate your letter grades, you should set it in the Use this column to calculate the Final Letter Grade dropdown box.
   
   
5. You can also choose to include any or all of the other columns in your gradebook for your own information by checking beside them, but these will not be uploaded into Bear Tracks.
   
   

Note: You will need to verify your letter grade boundaries and check the required box before you are able to click Download to save the file to your local machine.

Once downloaded, you can edit this file as long as you save it in the same .csv format. For example, you might do this if you want to manually enter the final letter grades for your students instead of having eClass run the letter grade calculations.

Once you have prepared your spreadsheet, you can then upload this file directly into Bear Tracks following this tutorial provided by the Bear Tracks team.

For full guides concerning Bear Tracks, please visit: https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/istea-campus-solutions/training-resources#h.ka37bzja7ty3