FTT - Gradebooks, Finals, Comments, and More (2021 Version)

Gradebooks, Finals, Comments, and More (2021 Version)

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

With 1st semester winding down, there's a lot to cover: getting our gradebooks in order, final exams, comments, blackout periods, and all of that fun stuff. Here's what you need to know:

1. Blackout dates and Schoology/IC Passback Information

• Click here for all information regarding dates and deadlines
• Make sure you publish all of your gradebook entries and finals!

2. 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)
• Switch from S1-DHS to Final/Midterm Materials

• 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.

3. 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%.
• DO NOT CHOOSE NUMERIC!!

4. 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. 

5. Common Mistakes!

Category Calculations: Total Points vs. Percent

The Math department teachers were the ones (no surprise) who first discovered this mistake - when creating your categories, make sure you know the difference between Total Points and Percent. Many teachers, thinking this meant weighted vs. unweighted, chose "Percent" as their grading option. Here is the slight mathematical difference between the two grading styles. 

Let's say little Jimmy has two assessments, one worth 10 points, and one worth 100 points.

Percent:

• 9/10 = 90%
• 85/100 = 85%
• =(90%+85%)/2 = 87.5%

Total Points:

• 9/10 = 90%
• 85/100 = 85%
• =94/110 = 85.5%

The difference is subtle, but can be the difference can affect a lot of students. Be careful changing this setting deep into the semester, as it will change all of your student scores. 

Grading Scale:

This is a relatively simple fix, but important to remember: DO NOT USE NUMERIC as your gradebook scale. It will result in an error when grades are synced with Infinite Campus. You MUST use one of the provided scales. 

6. Infinite Campus - Schoology Sync?

Just to explain how grades go from one system to the other, what happens is every night at around midnight, Schoology will begin dumping their raw data to Infinite Campus. It takes about 3-4 hours for everyone's grades to sync to Infinite Campus. So what do I have to do in Infinite Campus when grades are due?

• Enter incompletes, drops, and other grading tasks.
• While you can manually change the final grades in both systems, in Infinite Campus you can change the letter value without changing the numeric value. 
• You can also enter final grade comments on both IC and in Schoology. 

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

FTT - S1 to S2 Transition Blog

 

Best Ways To Finish S1 Strong and Set Your Students Up For Success In S2

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

1. Post all of your final exam information on Schoology!

I mean ALL of it. The dates, the times, the locations, what students should bring with them, how they should study. Don't assume anything. Did you say it 100 times in class? Did you also write it on the board and ask everyone to write it down? It doesn't matter! Please post it on Schoology. Make sure to include digital copies of anything you handed out in class. Remember, we have MTSS, TLC and ARC staff, counselors, case managers, and parents all working to support students. This will help remove barriers to students getting that help. Here is the Summative Assessment Week Page sent by Kathy.

2. At the very end of S1, copy your course to resources.

When semester 1 ends, your courses will be archived. Don't worry, you will be able to access those courses in the future. However, it's nice to also have the materials page saved to your Schoology resources so you can access it again for other classes you may teach. The bottom line is, this can be helpful and there is no downside so just do it.

    

Here's how you do it:

•     Navigate to your course's materials page
•     At the top click Options
•     Then choose Save Course To Resources
•     You can save to your home collection and no need to choose a folder

3. Rename Your Course SECTIONS for S1 and S2

I cannot overstate the importance of this one.

Since students will have access to both S1 and S2 tiles, they will need an easy way to determine which tile they need. If you have not already done so, or even if you have it's a good time to double check, please follow these instructions. 

• Navigate to your course and click Course Options (under the image)
• Click Edit Info

• The second box is for the Section Name- This is the box you want to change! There will be more than one if your sections are linked. DO NOT EDIT THE COURSE NAME

• Under section name, you can remove the IC course number and put the name of the course, period, and SEMESTER 1. You MUST click Save!

• Do this for your semester 2 tiles as well. Doing them all now ensures that when both are open you and your students will be able to easily identify them.
• Also, consider your tile images. You may want to put 2 different images to differentiate between S1 and S2 or your students may prefer that it is the same and that the section name is enough. 

4. Teach yourself and your students how to identify your S1 and S2 tiles and how to reorder their courses.

After you have renamed your sections and set your tile images, you will need to know how to navigate and reorder so the tiles you need are at the ready. Most of the staff know how to do this since our S1 and S2 tiles are visible for all of S1. This will be new and different for our students.

• Navigate to Courses in the blue menu bar at the top of the screen

• Click where it says My Courses on the right side of the screen under the blue bar

• Look at the right side of the screen where it says Mange Courses and click Reorder Courses

• Scroll down and you will notice there is a line. the top 12 courses will be visible as tiles and anything under that line will not be visible. 

• Choose the course tiles that you want to be visible in the courses dropdown and click and drag them up above that line. When you are done, just click the X. There is no save button on this screen.

If you are teaching a year-long course and plan to start using your S2 tile right away, instruct your students to move that tile above the line.

5. If you want your courses to be section linked for S2 now is the time to do that.

Here is a refresher on the terminology:

• Section Linking: When you have multiple sections of the same course, with the same name, and you want to link them so they share a materials page and updates. You can do this yourself! 
• Navigate to Courses  and then My Courses.
• Choose which course will be the "anchor" course. The other courses will be linked to it.
• Go to the gear and click Link Existing Section.
• You will then tick the boxes that identify the courses you want to link to this course.
• It will then prompt you to download a standard csv file. It does this because when you section link your courses all of the data from the non-anchor courses will be deleted. You should only link at the very start of each semester. Do not link and unlink once you have materials and grades in. If you do, they will be on the spreadsheet you just downloaded.

• Cross Linking: When you have multiple sections of a different course but they meet at the same time and in the same room. An example of this would be stacked classes. If you have a standard and an honors section that meet at the same time, you can request that they be cross linked so they will actually become one course for the purposes of Schoology. This is taken care of by our wonderful Rachel Lawrence in the district technology department. If you have not met her, send her an email to say hello. Rachel sent an email through IC Messenger with a link to a form for you to submit cross linking requests. Here it is again. 

If you aren't sure if you should be section linking or cross linking, feel free to contact Lisa Berghoff, Dan Kim, or Rachel Lawrence. We're happy to help you figure it out!