FTT - This is the end. Finish that Gradebook

With our first year of Schoology in the books, I am sure I can speak for all of the instruction tech/district tech teams, on how much we appreciate the good faith efforts our staff has put forth in learning Schoology. We all know how difficult it can be learning a brand new system, and we truly appreciate how patient and hard working the staff has been. With grades due next week, let's dive into what needs to be done to get grades right:

Quick Reminders/Dates:

• IC/Schoology Blackout Dates - Monday, June 3rd (8:00 am) - Thursday, June 6th (4:00 pm)
• Final Schoology Grade due before Sync - Thursday, June 6th (11:00 pm)
• Final Grades in IC due - Friday, June 7th (10:30 am)
• If your grades were up to date and finalized on Schoology during the last Schoology-to-IC Grade Sync, the only additional action in IC would be to enter Incompletes.
• Make sure you publish all of your gradebook entries!

What's new:

While Schoology hosts our up-to-date, individual student grades, we still rely on Infinite Campus for the final grade reports. Initially, standards-based graders, curvers, and teachers looking to round certain grades, needed to wait for a "window" to open up, when the sync would stop so that they could go directly into Infinite Campus to input their grades. Our district tech team has found a way to open that window permanently. You can now go directly to Infinite Campus RIGHT NOW, and input your grades without fear of the Schoology/IC grade sync overriding those grades. 

How to set up/enter Final Exams?

Setting up a final exam can be tricky - here are some questions you should ask yourselves before you try:

• Does your final exam "live" inside or outside of your semester grade?
• for example, mine "lives" outside of my semester grade with a breakdown below

• If so, you'll have to go to your Gradebook to create it. (Don't worry if it doesn't show up immediately. Just hit refresh)

• Then go to Grade Setup to assign percent values. (Remember to hit save)

• Do you have multiple parts to your final? Are they weighted as a percent, or by total points? Take a look at this Google Slides presentation for a deeper look into setting up finals.

Rounding choices: THSD 113 Rounded .5 vs Round Period/Final Grades

There are two methods to round grades automatically in Schoology. 

• THSD 113 Rounded .5 - this method is what is most familiar to our staff. A student receiving an 89.5% will earn an "A" for the course, but the value will stay an 89.5%
• Round Period/Final Grades - this is Schoology's native method. Every final value is rounded to the nearest percent. A student receiving an 89.5% will get a 90%, and a student receiving an 89.4% will get an 89%.
• DON'T CHOOSE NUMERIC!!

Grade Changes and Comments:

• If your student is on the edge of 2 grades and you'd like to manually change their grade, first you'll need to enable "Course Override Column" in the "Grade Setup" page. 
• Notice below for Rich Grady - who was at an 89.45% B+. Because I wanted to bump him up to an A-, I wrote in 89.5% in the Overall (Override) column, which gave him the grade bump. 
• If you want to give a student a grade bump, but do not want to change the % value, you can do that in IC through "Post Grades" (So Rich would keep the 89.45%, but still receive an A-)

• To add optional comments, you merely need to hover over the "Overall" grade column until the blue chatbox appears. Click on it and type in your comment. 
• Normally you'd need to click, "Display to Student" for students/parents to see your comments, but not for Semester Grade comments. 

Happy grading. Any questions? Feel free to contact our team! Dkim@dist113.org - Lberghoff@dist113.org