This is an important task to be done by the school district every single year, for each school individually, after your perform the rollover with us and (preferably) before school starts.

As this affects grading and grades within the Gradebook, it is extremely important to review these steps, review your data, and push this out correctly.

We have a "Gradebook Start of School Tasks & Administration" video posted here.

Basic Steps to Pushing out the Gradebook Profile Before the Start of School
If you just need a quick overview of the provess, below are the 5 basic steps.
1. Copy School Profile(s) forward and/or create a new profile - this is done on Gradebook>School Setup>School Profiles
2. Review profile setup and preferences - this is done on Gradebook>School Setup>School Profiles>Modify
3. Initialize Gradebooks - this is done via Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance>Gradebook Maintenance
4. Push Out Profiles - this is done via Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance>Profile Maintenance
5. Activate Gradebooks for Teacher access - this is done via Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance>Gradebook Status

Please continue below for in-depth info on the steps listed above, if further assistance is needed.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Types of Gradebook Profiles
• The School Default Course Profile
• Creating Default Profiles
• Setup a Default Profile
• Setup Profile Preferences
• Push out Default and Custom Gradebook Profiles 
• To distribute the entire Default School Profile
• To distribute the Grade Values
• Initialize Grade Books
• Custom Profiles
• Pushing a Custom Profile to Teachers
• Activate Grade Book Module for teachers
• Notes and FAQ

Types of Gradebook Profiles

It's important for you, as a district, to know which profile you need to push out every year.

Typically, many districts simply copy forward their default school profile from last year, tweak it if needed, and push it out for the new year.

But again, this is based on district policy which is why Genesis does not push this out automatically. It is up to the district to get this set up as needed based on your district policies.

There are two types of Profiles that can be created under “School Setup” and pushed out to teachers.

These can be viewed/modified via Gradebook>School Setup>School Profiles.

The first type is the “Default School Profile.”

When this is created and pushed out to teachers, every teacher in the school receives a copy of it.

It is generally used to specify the basic schema that all teachers in the school are required – or requested – to follow.

The second type of Profile is the “Custom Profile.”

The custom profile creation allows you to create custom profiles for specific courses in your school. By filling in certain criteria, you can control which of your courses receive your profile.

For example:  If you would like a profile to go out to all courses in your English department, you simply select the English department in the Department dropdown, save your profile and then press the Push Profile button.

You can get more granular as well by adding a grade option to the profile. By adding a grade, you can specify that only your English teachers who teach that specific grade level get the profile.

The parameters work together. This means that if you select a department and a subject, both parameters must be true in order for a gradebook to qualify for the profile. If only one of the parameters is true, then the gradebook will not get the profile.

Initially, no Profiles exist at the school level.

Any user with Gradebook Administrator privileges can create and push out the Default School Profile.

The School Default Course Profile

When this is created and pushed out to teachers, every teacher in the school receives a copy of it.

It is generally used to specify the basic schema that all teachers in the school are required – or requested – to follow.

If no Default School Profile yet exists, any Gradebook Administrator can create it.

If a user is a Gradebook Administrator (and no Default School Profile yet exists) the user will see a “Create School Profile” control at the top of the Gradebook>School Setup>School Profiles screen.

If you would prefer to simply copy forward the default school profile from last year, click the "Copy School Profile from 20XX-XX" to copy forward the profile you had in the previous year.

This is also found on the Gradebook>School Setup>School Profiles screen.

Creating Default Profiles

1. Navigate to the Gradebook>School Setup>School Profiles screen. Initially, no profiles will appear in the list on this screen.

2. You have two options to actually ‘create’ the default school profile.

a. Click the “Create School Profile” button directly under the “Course Profiles” label. This will immediately create the Default School Profile.

b. Click the “Copy School Profile from Previous Year” button directly under the “Course Profiles” label. This will immediately copy the prior year’s Default School Profile to “this year.” NOTE: Most districts do this but it is 100% a district decision.

Setup a Default Profile

After you copy forward or create the profile, you will now see them listed on the Gradebook>School Setup>School Profiles tab.

You can do three things to any profile that appears in the list on the screen:

1. You can delete it by clicking the Delete trashcan icon that corresponds to it (circled in red below.)

2. You can rename it by clicking the “Properties” icon – the left most of the three icons that correspond to a profile in this list (circled in red below.)

3. You can edit the Profile and change the grading defaults by clicking the “P” icon – the middle of the three icons (circled in red below.)

You will likely need to EDIT the profile to review - and the EDIT icon is the P icon above.

If you copied your default school profile from last year to this year and it is already set up the way you want, you can skip the next section. Just be sure to review the profile screens to ensure the data is what you want to push out to all of your teachers.

Setup Profile Preferences

From the Gradebook>School Setup>School Profiles>Modify Profile sub tabs, you can review and/or modify profile preference, grade translations, categories etc. before pushing it out.

This is where you will review the set up of the Gradebook you copied forward or created.

This is where you review your settings (such as grading scheme etc) so you know what you are pushing out to teachers.

Click the "P" icon to open up/edit the preferences (highlighted in YELLOW below.)

The course profile consists of the following things:

• Preferences - This defines several important things. First and foremost, the grading type that will grade your students for the school year. Preferences also define many of the options that can be turned on or off in order to shape the look and feel of your Gradebook.

• Grade Translations - This will setup your grades for the Gradebook. You can set up Alpha, Checks, Passing-Failing, OSU, and Preset Point values that are used for grading assignments.

• Categories - This screen will allow you to setup what type of assignments can be created and the weights that make up your Marking Period Grades.

• Units - These settings are based on the units that you teach in a course. Each assignment can be tied to a unit so you can get a feel how students have done in different section of your course.

• Workgroups - This allows the creation of groups so that you can group students together for assignments.

Push out Default and Custom Gradebook Profiles 

(This task must be done for each school - the district needs to push out a gradebook profile for each school.)

This is the step that will give the default school profile to every teacher in the school.

It's done, per school, via Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance>Profile Maintenance.

You will want to make sure that the profile is setup the way you want it for this new school year before you run this process to avoid having to do a re-push!

After the Default School Profile has been created/copied forward/set up, they must be distributed to teachers in order to take effect and be useful.

Profiles can be distributed in two ways:

1. The entire Default School Profile can be distributed

2. Only the Grade Values information can be distributed:

a. Alpha Grades alone can be distributed – or
b. Other Grade Translations

If you would like your teachers to get the school profile the first time they log in, then you must update the profile to do so.

Go to Gradebook>School Setup>School Profiles, click on the icon in the Properties column.

On this screen, set the "Propagate to all teachers" flag to Yes.

Now when a teacher logs into the Gradebook, the profile will automatically be propagated to them.

To distribute the entire Default School Profile

1. Click on the Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance>Profile Maintenance tab.

2. Locate the “Push School Profile to all teachers in <school name>” label.

Under this label you will find two checkboxes:

a. “Make the default profile” and

b. “Update all teachers courses to use this profile”

Check both checkboxes.

3. Click the “Run” button to push the Default School Profile to all teachers. This also sets the Default School Profile as the ‘automatic default’ to give to all new Gradebooks.

More on the “Push School Profile to all teachers in <School Name> High School” tool:

• If you run this function, the school profile will be pushed out to all teachers in the school.
• If you have removed categories from a prior push of the profile, those categories will NOT be removed when you push out your current school profile.
• If you have added any categories, they will be added to the categories that already exist in the teacher's profile.
• There are two sub options for this function. 
  1. The first is "Make this the default profile". This will make the profile the default for every teacher.
  2. The second option is "Update all teachers courses to use this profile". This will replace the profile for all gradebooks for the school. It will not delete the teachers profiles.
     
     

To distribute the Grade Values

1. Click on the Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance>Profile Maintenance tab.

2. Locate the “Push Parts of the School Profile to all teachers in <school name>” label. Under this label you will find two checkboxes:

a. “Alpha Grades” and
b. “Other Grade Translations”

- If you are only distributing Alpha Grade Values, click the “Alpha Grades” checkbox.

- If you are going to distribute all Grade Values, click both checkboxes.

- If you only want to distribute all the non-Alpha Grades, click only the “Other Grade Translations” checkbox.

3. Click the “Run” button to push the selected Grade Values to all teachers. This DOES NOT set these Grade Values as the automatic default.

Notes on the Distribution of Grade Values:

You may distribute the Grade Values – Alpha Grades and/or other Grade Values – as many times as necessary without affecting the other portions of teachers’ profiles. Do this by using the “Distribute Grade Values” mechanism.

This is typically used if a school district did NOT push out the entire Gradebook profile prior to school starting. If, mid year, you realize teachers do not have the correct Grading Values, based on your district grading policy, you may push out PARTS of the school profile to update this info. It will involve recalculating grade info, since the grade values may be different. 

Note: This is 100% a district decision. If teachers need the correct grade values, push that part out, and recalculate.

Initialize Grade Books

This is the step that will initialize or "start up" teacher’s gradebooks that have yet to be accessed.

This allows you to push out default and custom profiles directly to the Gradebooks.

From the Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance>Gradebook Maintenance screen:

• Click the ‘Initialize all gradebooks’ link to startup the teacher’s gradebooks

Custom Profiles

A capability has been added to the Genesis Gradebook to enable the creation of an unlimited number of Custom Profiles at the School level.

Custom Profiles can link to either Subjects or Departments and they can be pushed them out to Teachers who are teaching course sections which match one of the Subject or Department settings for the Profile.

Courses (via their Curriculum File entries) must first be correctly setup to accept a Custom Profile. The “Department”, “Primary Subject” and “Secondary Subject” fields on a Curriculum File entry determine whether a course will become linked to a custom Profile.

When a custom Profile is created for the subject of “MATH” (for example), and it is “pushed” out to teachers, it will be linked to all Gradebooks associated with a course which has a Primary or Secondary subject of “MATH”. Gradebooks for all other courses will be unaffected.

Custom Profiles cannot be pushed out unless they have a Department or Subject linkage.

You can copy Custom Profiles from prior years via Gradebook>School Setup>School Profiles.

Pushing a Custom Profile to Teachers

The Department and Subject linkages for Custom Profiles are located on the Rename screen. The Push control is also located there.

The Push button pushes the Custom Profile to the Gradebook of all teachers teaching a course section which matches one of the Subject or Department settings for the Profile.

Procedure to Push a Custom Profile to Gradebooks:

1. Go to the Gradebook>School Setup>School Profiles screen.

2. Locate the Custom Profile you wish to associate with Departments or Subjects and click the Properties icon button. This brings up the Properties screen for the Profile (highlighted in YELLOW below.)

3. At least one Subject or Department MUST be set to be able to push a Profile.  Set the propagation however you'd like (more on this below.) If you make a change, you must click "Save Profile Parameters" before clicking "Push Profile."

4. Click the "Push Profile" button to finish pushing it out.

Caveat: There is no school level “UNDO” for this operation. This will link all ‘matching’ course sections to this Profile and push the Profile to the Gradebooks of all teachers with a matching course section.

TIP: If you tried to push custom profiles out and nothing was pushed, you likely need to run the "initialize gradebooks" task via Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance>Gradebook Maintenance.

What is the Difference Between Setting Propagate to “Yes” and Setting it to “No” on the Custom Profiles screen?

The difference is simply: Will the Profile simply be pushed out, or will it be pushed out AND tied to the Gradebooks who qualify for it?

How the Propagate Option Works:

If you are NOT going to Push your Custom Profile out to qualifying teachers, this is how the propagate option works:

• If propagate is set to Yes, all teachers with gradebooks that qualify for this profile will have this profile added to their list of profiles when the teacher goes into the gradebook next. This profile WILL NOT become their gradebook's new profile.
• If propagate is set to No, this profile will not be copied to any teachers.

If you are looking to Push your Custom Profile out to qualifying teachers, this is how the propagate option affects the Push:

• If propagate is saved as Yes, all gradebooks that qualify for this profile will get a copy on their profile screen. The profile will also be set as the gradebooks new profile.
• If propagate is saved as No, then the profile will be copied to all gradebooks that qualify, but will not be made each gradebooks new profile.

Activate Grade Book Module for teachers

This step will allow the teachers to begin using the Gradebook for the new school year.

Make sure you’ve completed all aspects of setting up the Gradebook prior to completing this step.

Once teachers begin using their Gradebooks it becomes much more difficult to make profile and setting changes.

From the Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance>Gradebook Status screen:

1. Set the ‘Gradebook Status’ to ‘Active’

2. Click the ‘Save Gradebook Status’ button

This should be the last step you do to ensure teachers do not log in, set up a Gradebook profile, and then have their profiles undone by an admin pushing out a default school profile. It'll help reduce issues/errors that may come up. But again, it's all up to the district to make this decision as to "when" the Gradebooks are "open" to users.

Notes and FAQ

• Please try to push out default school profiles prior to school starting. It is the best way to ensure all teachers are using the same preferences, grade translations, categories etc when creating and grading assignments throughout the year.
• Pushing out a school profile mid-year is not recommended because it could adversely affect teachers’ assignments and grades.
• HOWEVER, if you did not push out a default school profile before school started, you can always push out PARTS of the school profile to ensure they have the correct alpha grade translations.  It would update all teachers’ profiles to have the Alpha Grades set up in the default school profile found on Gradebook>School Setup>Profiles.
• NEW | 5/24/23| We added warnings to the Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance>Gradebook Status screen. The warnings for the following scenarios: school profile exists in 'last year' but not 'this year' OR the school profile is not set to propagate in current year but was set to propagate last year.