How to set up quarter courses for a school that uses semesters

Leslie Hagen

Hello Blackbaud Community - 


Our school is set up as semesters but we have 3 Middle School classes that function on a 9 week schedule. For example, a student would take Art for 9 weeks of the semester and then Drama for the remaining 9 weeks of the semester. Curious to know if other schools have this hybrid set-up and if so, how do you have it built in the system? Any tips/tricks to share? Thanks so much! 

Scott Chrysler

Leslie - 


We have the same situation; however, our set up is very different. Since our middle school has quarter-long courses, that school is set with a quarter while our upper school is set up with semesters. This is the only reason we set our middle school up this way. It makes it very easy to move our 6th and 7th graders through their "arts cycle" and have each of those courses post their own quarter and final grade.


I think there are a few different ways of handling this with your set up:


1. Title the course Art/Drama 6 and run it for the semester. At the change of the quarter, update the section with the new teacher and new classroom. The pros of this is that it is very easy to do. The con is that there is not a stand alone grade for either course as the the 2nd quarter teacher would also assume the 1st quarter teacher's gradebook in the course.


2. Have Art 6 run for the semester and Drama 6 run for the semester. Let's say the students are taking Art 6 first quarter, at the end of the quarter drop the students from Art 6 and enroll them in Drama 6. This is also easy to do. The con is that you need to be sure you permit dropped courses to appear on your report cards and transcript. This could get very messy with other situations. 


3. Have Art 6 run for the semester and Drama 6 run for the semester. Let's say the students are taking Art 6 first quarter, at the end of the quarter cancel all of the remaining classes in the 2nd quarter. In the Drama 6 course, you would cancel all of the classes in the 1st quarter. The pro of this is that you do not have the report card/transcript issue mentioned above. The con is that it will tedious cancelling all of those classes.  


Or, you can bite the bullet and completed rebuild the academic calendar for your middle school next year - and the grade plans you will inevitably need to support that new calendar.


I am sure there are few other "hacks" (or as Blackbaud likes to call them "work-arounds") that are possible, but those were the ones that immediately came to mind.


Good luck.


Scott

Angela Kunz

We are a High School that is set up for semesters but we have a freshman course sequence and a sophomore health that are a quarter.  In order to handle this we set up separate courses for each Quarter for example our Art 1 is Art 1 Q1, Art 1 Q2, Art 1 Q3, Art 1 Q4. Then we use a separate schedule set with it's own blocks that will control how the course will run.  We also have two grade plans for Q1/Q3 and Q2/Q4.  Hope this helps.