Making Your List and Checking it Twice

We’re now at a point where Teachers are back and getting ready for the new year. You’ve completed your Master Rollover and may be working through your schedule or you’re on the ball and that’s done too! This is a great time of year to make sure everything on your to do list is checked off! Here are a few things to consider for your list:

Grading in onRecord can be a bit overwhelming. There are a lot of moving parts and each piece needs to be set up correctly or you may run into an issue when it comes time to enter grades or publish report cards. There are a few small items you can check to make sure things are set up correctly and most of this will focus on Grade Plans.

First things first, if your school uses transcripts, in each term you need an End of Term Grade Plan. The End of Term Grade Plan prompts the system to award credits per term. Without these Grade Plans, no credits will be awarded for Students. This tends to create a lot of panic at the end of the year when trying to get out Final Transcripts for Seniors. Another thing to be aware of with an End of Term Grade Plan is that you need to have separate End of Term Grade Plans for Single and Multi-Term Courses. You can tell if your school has an End of Term Grade Plan because it is denoted by a little (E). (where can they see this?)

In Support we usually get a few calls for Teachers not being able to assign grades. This is usually due to the Grading Begin and End Dates not being correct. The Grading Begin and End Dates are specific to each Grade Plan and would need to be set from within the Grade Plan. Always make sure to double check the year for the date you set. Remember, next Spring will be 2017! This is an easy mistake to make and one we see quite often.

Another issue teachers may run into is having access to Grading, but being asked to enter a formula when they calculate grades. This means that the grade they are calculating does not have a Grading Formula added for it in the Grade Plan. Once a Grading Formula is added, teachers will no longer be prompted to create their own formula when clicking Calculate.

We also hear from teachers who can see the Grading Formula, but are unable to select a letter grade from the available drop down or they see the wrong letter grades in the drop down. Now is a great time to double check your Grading Categories and Grade Translations. The Grading Category is what ties the Grade Translation to the Grade Plan. Your Grade Translation is the letter grade scale you want to use.

Finally, go through your Grade Plans and make sure you have all the Grades and Comments you need. There is nothing worse than getting through your term and then realizing that you are missing a Grade or Comment that you need.

Some other areas to check out:

• Checking Marking Periods- Are your Marking Period dates correct? Did you know that the system actually sees the term end date as the term closing on that date at 12:00 AM? We typically recommend having your Marking Periods end on a weekend so that teachers are less likely to see their Grade Book default to 1st term. Make sure you have selected how you want your school’s Marking Periods to be set up(quarters or semesters). It’s way easier to change it now then to wait until the middle of the School Year.

• Checking Grade Access- This is a great time to decide who you want to be able to see Grades for Students. Are you looking for Parents to be able to see their Student’s Grades? You’ll want to set that up in Grade Access. A thing to note here, you can select Display, which means you are giving the individual teacher the option to display the grade or you can require Teachers to display the grades by selecting Required. If you have an Academic Dean and you want them to be able to access All Student Grades, the best way to do that would be to make them an Advisor and open Grade Access to All Advisors.

• Checking terms-Make sure your Terms aren’t overlapping! This is create duplicate courses in your Courses drop down as well as duplicate Assignments in the Assignment Center.

• Check to make sure Teachers have set up their Grade Books- If  a Teacher does not set up their Grade Book correctly before adding assignments, there can be problems down the road for that teacher with their Grade Book. We also now have a handy Grade Book setup guide available for schools that will assist you in helping your teachers select the correct setup for them.