Getting Ready For A Great Year!

Published
The school year is now over (or maybe you’re just wrapping up a few last minute details) and it’s time to start getting ready for next year! After May’s blog, you should be ready to dive into setting up for the new year while avoiding those pesky pitfalls your school may have fallen into last year. When schools are looking to close out their current year and gear up for the next, we always recommend starting with the Annual Procedures documentation. This document goes through all the steps you’ll need to take in order to create a solid foundation for the coming year. It covers everything from Years & Terms to rolling over your Groups to User Management. It even includes a link to a recorded webinar that walks through these steps with you! In this blog, we’re going to touch on some things to keep in mind when running through the different aspects of Annual Procedures.
 
Master Rollover – Academic Groups
A big part of Annual Procedures is what we call the Master Rollover. The Master Rollover allows schools to copy Group Types, Grade Book, Grading and Course Request settings from year to year without having to rebuild them from scratch! Last month, we asked you to really think about any setup issues you ran into this past year so you can tweak those things now before the back to school rush in August and September. It’s always easier to change things when school is out rather than in the middle of the year when you’re handling a million other things! Remember how we wanted you to start thinking about which classes you might not want to offer again? During the Master Rollover over, you can go through and select which courses, activities, teams, etc., you do not want to continue offering. This excludes them from the next school year so you don’t have to worry about offering a course or adding a roster by mistake. You may find it helpful to have a list of these groups handy when performing the Master Rollover in order to make sure you don’t forget to exclude something.
 
Grading
Did you like how your Grading went this past year? As a part of the Master Rollover, you can roll over Grading, including Grade Plans, formulas, Academic Performance, GPAs and Report Cards! Think of all the time you spent setting those up! It may have required a few calls or chats with Support to create the perfect Grade Plan, Report Card or GPA. We love answering your questions and helping you get there! But we also know this is just one of many items on your to-do list. By rolling your Grading over now, you can avoid stress and worry at the end of your 1st term when you realize you did not set the Grade Plan up exactly like last year or your GPA isn’t factoring in half of your courses.
 
On the other hand, let’s say you ended your year and never really got your Grading to be perfect. Maybe it’s close or way off, but you need to make some changes. You have two options here, you can rebuild it from scratch or you can roll it over your and work off your existing setup to create exactly what you’re looking for. Either way, you’ll want to work on getting these set up now. Check out our Knowledgebase for information on setting these up or contact our Support team for assistance!
 
Creating New Courses
Once you’ve rolled over existing courses, you may need to add a few new ones for various reasons. An English teacher may be emphatic that she would like to teach a year-long course on Romantic Poetry. Or perhaps you’ve determined Calculus courses don’t actually need to be three trimesters long. Whatever the reason, creating courses should always take place after you perform the Academic Master Rollover, that way you know you are definitely not duplicating an existing course. New courses are created in Departments and Courses within Core and then offered in onCampus.
           
So what if you need to change something like the course title or credits? Can you just go ahead and make these changes to the existing course? One thing to keep in mind is that any changes you make to a course are reflected on all instances of that course, including sections for the coming year or five years ago. So you never want to make a change to a course if you want that information to continue to show in its original form for Past Students. In those cases, it is always safer to create a new course.
 
More Rollover!
At this point, your Academics should be set up and ready to rock and roll! Let’s take a look at some of the other Group Types. One question our Support team hears a lot is how to give a specific user access to Grades and Courses for students. If you found yourself asking this question last year, you may want to look into setting up Advisories. As an Advisor, users have access to student course information depending on the access set in Grade Access and Group Page Access. Another request we hear often is how to give an Academic Dean (or similar title) the ability to add a comment to a student’s Report Card. This can also be accomplished by creating an Advisory for that user. If your school already uses Advisories, you can use the Advisory Master Rollover which works just like the Academic Master Rollover, bringing this year’s Advisories into next year. For more information and examples of different ways to utilize Advisories, have a look at this blog article: Advisories - Getting Creative.
 
You can also roll over the Activity, Athletic and Dorm group types. This rollover is similar to the Academic and Advisory groups. Depending on your school, you may or may not use all of these, but now is a good time to consider adding new group types. Each type has its own unique features and we have several Help Topics and Articles available on each in our Knowledgebase! If you’re interested in adding new group types for your school, reach out to your Account Executive to see how they can work for you!
 
Creating New Letter Grade Scales
Another thing we asked you to check last month was your Letter Grade Scales. Let’s say you polled your teachers and discovered that no one was using the scales because they really didn’t work for them. Now is the time to create a new Letter Grade Scale that would better suit your teachers’ needs.
 
There are a couple things to keep in mind when setting up a Letter Grade Scale. First, if a teacher is using the Percentages calculation method, you need to make sure that the highest Letter Grade has a Numeric Value of 100, otherwise the cumulative grade will not calculate correctly. Second, the Letter Grade Scale only looks at the Numeric Value for its calculation. It does not use the Minimum Score or Maximum Score; those are for informational purposes only. Also, we do not recommend using the Letter Grade Scale if your school needs to calculate a Term Grade Average. If you calculate a term average, skip right over Letter Grade Scales and instruct your teachers not to select this in their Grade Book setup!
 
Sign In Messages for Teachers
While we are on the subject of Grade Book setup, it’s a good idea to look into setting up a sign in message for teachers that includes instructions on how to set up their Grade Books. Sign In Messages appear as a popup when user log in and they can be used to display information for specific users or information that needs to be acknowledged by users. This is a great way to remind teachers to set up their Grade Books while also providing setup information specific to your school. You can also incorporate links to the Individual Grade Book Setup Help Topic in the Sign In Message. It provides instructions for Teachers on how to set up their Grade Book as well as highlighting new features so teachers are aware of the new tools at their fingertips.
 
Another great reason to use a Sign In Message is that it gives you the ability to use the Messages Read Report under the Sign In Actions report category. This is a useful report for finding out who has not acknowledged the message and still needs to set up their Grade Book. Remember this year, when Ms. X was seeing strange things with her assignments and it was because she didn’t set up her Grade Book before creating assignments? Let’s try to avoid that this year!
 
Resources for Teachers
After completing your Rollover and making sure everything is set up correctly, you can start collecting resources for your teachers. For new teachers or returning teachers who may just need a reminder, we definitely recommend checking out our Training Resources and reviewing the Constituent Guides for Teachers under onCampus and onRecord. These will give teachers a basic overview of their Academic Groups and some of the really great features available to them. To access Training Resources, you will want to log into the App, click on your name and select Training Resources from the drop down. The Constituent Guides are on the right side under Getting Started Guides. While you’re in Training Resources, take a look at the Editable Guides we have available. These are a great starting point for creating documentation for your school! Also, if you click on School-Created Resources, you can see the Resources other schools have created so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel with your own documentation!
 
News Blackbaud K-12 Education Solutions™ Blog 07/05/2016 10:12am EDT

Leave a Comment

Check back soon!

Share: