Transcripts/Year-long Courses

@Russ Connell - Your first question ("which is preferred?") is a matter for many long discussions in faculty meetings that lead to no decision until you're all sick and tired of the topic ?.

At my school, we report only the year-end grade on the transcript. The year-end grade is the average of the three term grades. The whole credit is awarded (or not) based on passing the course for the year (or not). Failing one term does not imply failing the course or a reduction in credits earned.

At my previous school, the practice at the time I was there was that credit was awarded per term. A student who failed a term could subsequently “establish the credit” by passing the next term and completing any other work from the failed term as dictated by the faculty (such as actually writing the major research paper without plagiarizing, or complete the 5 big lab assignments, etc.)

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Your second question ("what does that look like in the Blackbaud set up?") is easier to answer. The default is to distribute the course credit evenly over the terms. For example, a 1-credit course lasts three terms. A student who passes all three terms earns ⅓ of a credit in each term. A student who fails the fall term and passes the other two terms earns ⅔ of a credit.

You can change the default behavior by specifying the credit to be awarded in each term.

In Academics > Scheduling > Requests & schedules > Courses, edit a course record. On the Grading tab, change Specify credit per term to Yes.

Then in Academics > Scheduling > Requests & schedules > Offer course, when the course is offered, click on Edit Credits.

In the dialog, distribute the course credit according to your policy.

The credit for the term is awarded if the student's grade for that term is a passing grade (as defined in the relevant Grade Translation table. In our case, that means that the student never earns credit in the fall or winter - regardless of if they passed the term or not. The whole credit is earned in the spring term (or not) based on passing for the year (or not).

Once you have specified credits per term for a course, the settings and credit values will be copied into subsequent years as part of the master rollover.

@Michael Clark - I'll talk with our College Counseling office to get the details of what we send and when. I built all of the transcripts and report cards, but I'm not sure what their current practice is.

@Michael Clark - I spoke with our College Counseling office manager to get the current/correct information.

• In mid-September (after most student schedule changes have been made), we send colleges a transcript that includes
  • courses and final grades from previous years
  • the names of senior year courses in progress (but no grades). See info below.
• In December (after the end of the fall term) we send a fall term report card for current courses.
• In June (after graduation) we send a transcript that shows final grades for all courses (including courses just completed in the senior year) and the date of graduation.
  

We use Maia Learning, so the transcripts and report cards are uploaded as PDFs to Maia.

To create the “courses in progress” transcript, I made a copy of the official transcript template and changed a setting to include courses with no grades or comments.

It looks like this: