•  Adding or deleting grading periods may reorganize all teachers gradebooks, so it will force everyone at your school to logout, possibly losing any changes on the screen they are currently viewing. For this reason you should announce to your staff in advance before you edit the grading periods. (But merely modifying the dates, descriptions, or abbreviations, without adding or deleting anything, is harmless and will not logout anyone. You'll see a warning prompt if it needs to logout everyone.)

•  If you remove any grading periods, that will cause changes to teachers' gradebooks that cannot be undone. For example, if you change from a Quarters & Semesters schedule to just Semesters, their 1st & 2nd Quarter gradebooks will be merged into a single gradebook for the Semester and cannot be unmerged, not even from backups.

Please feel free to contact us for advice. A good setup at the beginning of the year will make things much easier when it is time for report cards.


Multiple Tracks

You may define up to four different tracks, in case different students at your school have different grading periods — e.g., for a multi-track year. Teachers can choose which track to use when they create a gradebook (if they teach on more than one track, they must have separate gradebooks for each).


Summer School, Year-Round

When you start a new year, select "Summer School is separate from regular school year" if appropriate. Otherwise uncheck it if you're on a year-round schedule, and you can simply add summer as one of the terms in your regular school year.


Calendar Year

If your school follows the calendar year from Jan. to Dec. instead of the traditional school year from Fall to Spring, select "2010-2011" for the 2011 calendar year. Once you save your grading periods it will rename itself automatically to "2011".


Continuous Enrollment

If students are all self-paced and enroll any time during the year, set one grading period for the whole year — e.g. a term called "School Year" from 8/1 to 7/31, or from 1/1 to 12/31. Teachers will then have one gradebook for the whole year. Students may be added and dropped any time.

Teachers should leave the dates blank on all assignments, and check the "Independent Study" checkbox, since each student will do the assignment at a different time. If a student starts a course in one year, but finishes it in the next year, you must reenter all their grades into the later gradebook (i.e., it cannot calculate a total grade from two different years).


Weighted Cumulatives

Some schools use weights to calculate cumulative grades, like:

Admins may set these weights as defaults on the screen. (This default applies to new teachers only; it does not retroactively change teachers' gradebooks, and it does not prevent teachers from changing the weights.)

Teachers may set their own weights on the screen.

(The weights are just relative numbers, and do not need to total 100. For example, weights of 2/2/1 have the same effect as 40/40/20 since they are the same ratio.)


Cumulative vs. Subtotal Grades

You can select whether students see their cumulative grade or subtotal grade for the current grading period. For example, a student may have 80% for 1st quarter, 90% for 2nd quarter, and 85% for the semester, so you specify whether the student sees the current quarter grade (90%) or current semester grade (85%) when they login. This also applies to what teachers see on most screens in their gradebooks.

Admins set this default on the screen. (This default applies to new teachers only; it does not retroactively change teachers' gradebooks, and it does not prevent teachers from changing it.)

Teachers may set their own preference on the screen.

Note that teachers can always look on the screen to see all grades for all grading periods, and likewise students can look at their Report Cards to see all grading periods.


See also: Start a New Year or Term, Start a New Gradebook, Cumulative Grades