Teacher access to classes before terms start

Phil Paskvan
Phil Paskvan
Ninth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Learning Management System™

Once our year has been set up is there a way for teachers to have their courses available in the classes button before the later terms start? Now they go to groups, more groups, year, academics, school level etc.

Comments

  • Rose Mary Herbert
    Rose Mary Herbert
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    We have our terms set July1-December 31 and then January 1-June 30 to cover the entire year. This allows teachers to have easy access to their classes starting July 1. I have group page access set only for them, not parents and students, so the teachers can build out bulletin boards, etc. Access for parents and students is granted at the actual start of school.

    Originally we were using the “days to default” to extend the end of the term but that did not solve the beginning of the term issue when teachers needed to be in their classes prepping.

  • Phil Paskvan
    Phil Paskvan
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    Thanks for your reply! I'll think on your solution but it seems your 2nd term would not be in the classes tab until Jan 1 correct?

    To make things more fun, we have 3, 3 week intensives so it more is like 5 terms in the high school. This messes up our “final grade” calculations between term 1 and 2 because Bb does not seem to see our term 2 as the final term, it reads the 3rd intensive as the end of the year.

  • Phyllis Armstrong
    Phyllis Armstrong
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    Our teachers can access next year's classes (July 1-Dec 31 and Jan 1-June 30 terms) by clicking the “View other classes” link at the bottom of their Classes dropdown and changing the year field from current to 22-23. Not perfect, but just a couple of clicks. Would this work for you?

  • Candace Chesler
    Candace Chesler
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    We have the Group Finder tile set up on our Faculty Resource Board. If they need to find ANY course from a different term - they change the filter on that tile to be “all year” - and then type in their search words. Fewer clicks than using the magnifying glass search icon.

  • Phil Paskvan
    Phil Paskvan
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    Hi Rose,
    How many terms does your school have? We have 5 in the high school, 3 in the Middle School and two everywhere else.

  • Rose Mary Herbert
    Rose Mary Herbert
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    @Phil Paskvan
    We have 2 in our lower school, 3 in our middle school and 3 in our high school. Really we just run semesters with a summer term that is only used for students in MS or HS who take an occasional summer class. Yes, teachers do not see their classes until the term starts but it has not been a problem for us since switching to this set up.

  • Brian Gray
    Brian Gray Community All-Star
    Eighth Anniversary Kudos 5 bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge K-12 Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge

    @Phil Paskvan - you are correct that 2nd term courses will not appear until the first day of the term.

    We have three terms - fall, winter, spring. The academic year and the fall term both begin on July 1. Fall term courses appear in the Classes menu on that day. The vast majority of our courses are full-year, so that's sufficient for most teachers. Those who teach a winter term course won't see it in the menu until the first day of that term.

    We tell those teachers how to find the course for the future term (either with Group Search or View Other Classes). But we also tell them to bookmark the course page the first time they find it. That way, they can get back to it quickly later, without having to repeat the search.

    If you have anyone who is a programmer with access to a web server, you can construct an index of all courses for the entire year. My index is here. This page reveals only the links to the pages. Anyone using it must be signed into the LMS, and they get whatever access they are authorized to have for each course.

    You can create a much simpler version by using an Advanced List to extract the list of sections and then using a little bit of spreadsheet magic to create links with the HYPERLINK() function in Google Sheets or Excel.

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