Gradebook FAQ

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Assignments
• Attendance
• Grading Calculations
• Gradebook Profiles
• Home Screen
• Merging Gradebooks
• Post Grades Screen
• Seating Chart
• Spreadsheet
• Year Summary Screen
• Miscellaneous

Assignments

Question: How do I weight an assignment?
Assignments can be weighted by clicking on the assignment title from the spreadsheet screen. This will bring to a screen where you can modify all the fields of an assignment, including Assignment Weight. See Adding & Editing Assignments for more information.

Question: I accidentally deleted an assignment! Can I get it back?
When an assignment is deleted, it goes to the Gradebook's Trash Can, where you can restore the assignment to its former glory!

Question: I have my Gradebook set to drop the lowest assignment grade for students.  Is there a way for me to override that for individual students, if necessary?
Dropped Grades now have a lock icon next to the grade on the student's assignment screen. If the teacher locks the grade, the grade will be locked and will not be dropped in the grading calculation. The next lowest score will be dropped in its place.

Question: I have 3 teachers gradebooks tied to one another. How do they populate their assignments in one gradebook and copy into the other 2 gradebooks?
If gradebooks are merged, then you only have to create the assignment in one and it will be seen in all 3 gradebooks. There is no need to push it to multiple gradebooks.
If the gradebooks are not merged, then you can copy the assignments from one gradebook to another from the Gradebook>Assignments>Assignment List screen.

Attendance

Question: When I try to take attendance for my class, I get a message that says 'Course does not meet today'. How can I fix this?
See the Class Attendance FAQ for answers to this question.

Question: I take attendance for one of my classes but the Post Attendance screen still says I have not posted. What could be wrong?
A common cause of this is that the Gradebook is merged. If one of the merged courses Gradebooks has no students, this can cause the Gradebook to think that class attendance has not been taken in that course. A solution would be to break the merge or to make sure to post attendance in the course that actually has students.

Grading Calculations

Question: I think my marking period grade is not being calculated properly. Is there a way for me to see the way that the Gradebook is calculating the numbers?
The Genesis Gradebook shows you the complete calculation for all of a student's grades on the Grade Breakdown screen. This screen can be accessed by clicking the student's MP Average on your Gradebook's main spreadsheet screen or by clicking on the Grading tab when you access your students information in the Gradebook.

Question: How does my Gradebook figure out a final grade before all of my grades are in?
The Gradebook knows what grades are required and the weighting of the grade in order to figure out your final grade. With that information, a final grade can be calculated without all the required grades.

Example of a Calculation: A course meets and collects a grade in MP1 through MP4. The course also collects a Final Exam grade. Let's pretend that each marking period grade is worth 22% of the final grade, while the exam is worth 12%. Here are the student's grades so far: MP1 - 90, MP2 - 95, MP3 - 98, MP4 - 100.

The calculation would look like this:

MP1 Product: 90 * (22 / 100) = 19.8
MP2 Product: 95 * (22 / 100) = 20.9
MP3 Product: 98 * (22 / 100) = 21.56
 MP4 Product: 100 * (22 / 100) = 22.0

The 90 in the MP1 product represents the MP average and the 22 represents the percentage of the final grade.

Final Grade: (84.26 * 100) / 88) = 95.75

The 84.26 represents the sum of all of the marking period products, while the 88 represents the sum of all the weights being used. If the student also had an exam grade, then you would need to figure out the product of the exam (using the same calculation as the MP products) and the 88 in the final grade calculation would now be 100.

Question: I just changed the school year to last year. When I change grades on a student's assignment, the marking period and final grades are not changing. What is going on?
By default, Marking Period and Final Grades are not recalculated for previous years in Genesis. However, you can override this by going to the Gradebook>SchoolSetup>Maintenance screen and switching the "Allow Marking Period and Final grades to be changed for the previous school year" to Yes. This will only allow users to change grades for the previous school year. Assignment Grades can be altered for any school year, but they will not effect the MP or FG grades.

Gradebook Profiles

Question: Do I need to push out a school profile every year?
 It is a post-rollover task to be done by the school district every year, yes.  And it is to be be done per school.

For more info, please review our Gradebook Push Out Guide - it is very important for districts to push out accurate info - since this affects all of your teachers and how assignments are graded etc.

Question: When should I push out the gradebook profiles? Should I leave our Gradebooks as inactive?
 The best time to push out profiles would be before school starts.  It is, of course, a district decision - but if you push out profiles before teachers gain access, it will be more streamlined.  You will be able to push out Grade Translations, Preferences, Categories etc before teachers get the change to create their own.  So, you wouldn't end up modifying any existing Gradebooks.

For more info, please review our Gradebook Push Out Guide - it is very important for districts to push out accurate info - since this affects all of your teachers and how assignments are graded etc.

Question: Which profiles do I push out?  A School Default or a Custom Profile?
 This is up to your district.  It is a district decision and task to be done every school year after the rollover.  If you are unsure of what your district did, I would recommend rolling the year back to the previous year and reviewing the profiles via Gradebook>School Setup>School Profiles.

A School Default can be used to push your base categories, grade translations, preferences etc to ALL teachers.  A Custom profile can be pushed out by Department or Subject etc.

For more info, please review our Gradebook Push Out Guide - it is very important for districts to push out accurate info - since this affects all of your teachers and how assignments are graded etc.

Question: Why can't this teacher see their old profiles on the Gradebook>Profiles>Last Year tab?
If the user has a profile in the current year with the same name as one from last year, we assume that they are the same profile so it is not shown. What the teacher can do just rename the profile they have for this year. After that's saved - if they revisit the Last Year tab, they should see Last Year's profiles.

Question: How do teachers add sub categories to their Gradebooks?
The teacher will go to the Grade Book> Profiles>Categories screen.

Click on this icon:  

This will bring you to the Edit Subcategories screen - which allows you to add subcategories to an existing category.

Another possibility is to use the Grade Book>Profiles>Profile Library screen. If the user has permission to that screen, they can select the profile they are looking for by filtering by teacher or course. Then hit the copy icon to copy it to themselves. The teacher can change the profile of their gradebooks on the Gradebook>Setup>Course Profile screen by switching the profile in the dropdown at the top.

Question: How do I push out JUST THE GRADE TRANSLATIONS to all teacher profiles?
Click here for the wiki on this!

If school has already started, and you notice that teachers have different grading translations that DO NOT match your school profile, you can push out JUST the Alpha Grade translations to ALL teacher profiles via Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance>Profile Maintenance with the "Push Parts of the School Profile to all teacher profiles in" tool. The wiki above provides more info.

Home Screen

Question 1: My teacher schedule is not appearing on the right hand side. What could be wrong?
Question 2: Only some of my courses are appearing in my teacher schedule on the right hand side. What could be wrong?
 These are happening most likely because one of these common setup problems:

1. If you are nearing a MP change, your courses may be experiencing this problem because your attendance cycle dates are setup incorrectly. Change the dates on your 'Semester' and 'Marking Period' cycles to the correct start and end dates for your school. This can be done from the Setup>Schools>Params>Attendance Cycles screen.
2. Genesis requires that any attendance cycle that defines a length of a course be defined as a type of 'Semester'. These cycles are FY, S1, S2, Q1-Q4, C1-C6, E1-E8, F1-F5, and M1-M12. Make sure those cycles are defined as 'Semester'.
3. Another possible problem may be that your cycle days are not laid out or they are laid out incorrectly on your school calendar. You can apply your cycle days on the Calendar>School>Calendar screen.
4. If your school uses Bell Periods, make sure that the print period of the course is set up to meet for all of the students in the class section.
   
   

Question: All of the teachers courses are not appearing as Gradebooks. What could be causing the Gradebooks to not appear?
 The most common reason for one of your courses not appearing as a Gradebook is because there are not any student's scheduled into your class. Verify that there are active students in the course.

Click Here for More Info on the Gradebook Home Screen

Merging Gradebooks

Question: I have 2 courses where 1 student appears in both although the student does not have the course in their schedule. When I try to merge the course, it returns with an error telling me that a student is active in both courses. What can I do to fix this?
This is usually caused by Gradebooks being initialized prior to scheduling being completed. Since the the Gradebook relies on a student's add/drop records to determine class rosters, it can be confused if the add/drop record is removed during scheduling. The good thing is that it can be fixed very easily.

Simply go to the Gradebook>Roster screen for the course that is listing a student incorrectly. Once here, hit the Save button on the bottom of the screen. Behind the scenes, the Gradebook will analyze each of the students in the course. If they do not belong in the course, then the student will be dropped automatically. Once the screen has refreshed, you should be able to merge your courses.

Question: I want to merge 2 courses but the Gradebook keeps telling me there is an assignment in one of the courses. I have checked the Assignment screen and don't see any. What could be the problem?
This is usually caused by assignments that are in a marking period that the course does not meet. Go to the Assignments screen and change the Marking Period drop down to All Assignments. The assignments will then appear.

Question: Both teachers are tied to my logon, but I do not see the courses listed to merge. Why?
This is most likely occurring because the Gradebook have not been initialized yet (especially if it's the start of the school year.) They won't display at all until they are initialized. To initialize a Gradebook, you can just access the teacher's gradebook. Or there is an "Initialize Gradebooks" task via Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance that will initialize all of them for the school.

Question: A staff member has linked two of her course sections for course pages - but the posts are not showing up in the Parent portal.
It could be that the teacher merged the posts after the original 2 had been posted to the course. Posts prior to the linkage are not seen. In order to see the previous posts, the teacher can break the link between the 2 courses. Then go into one course, and copy the 2 posts to the other course. Once completed, just link them again and then all the posts will appear for the 2 web pages. Once the link has been reestablished, all posts in the future will appear in both course pages.

Post Grades Screen

Question: When I enter a final grade for student, it is changing when I hit save. What is happening?
Some schools automatically calculate Final Grades based on your schools own calculation. That means that any grade you enter into the Final Grade field will not stick unless you are able to override the grade. In order to do this, simply check the override check box for each grade prior to saving the screen. If the check box is not available to you, contact your system administrator.

Question: Can I post grades for dropped students?
When a student is dropped from a course section prior to Marking Period grades being posted, grades will not automatically be collected for them in the section they were dropped from. However, a function exists to allow the responsible teacher to post grades for any of the students who have dropped the section. At the top right of the Gradebook>Post Grades screen, locate the "Show Dropped Students" radio buttons. Set it to “Yes”. Then, wait for the screen to refresh and the dropped student(s) to be displayed. You can then give those students a grade as well.

Question: The words "No Match" appear after the School field for my students. What is causing this?
This happens when a school posts alpha grades and Genesis can not find a matching grade in the school's alpha grade setup. This can be fixed on your school's Grading>Setup>Valid Grades>Alpha Grades. The Gradebook tries to find a match by taking the student's numeric average and compares it to the From and Through values on the school's alpha grades. Just adjust those values so that the Gradebook can determine what grade should be posted.

Question: How does the final grade get determined in a school who is setup to collect alpha grades?
 If your "Calculate Projected Final Grade using posted MP grades and Gradebook grades" is set to No, the Gradebook tries to find a match by taking the student's numeric average and compares it to the From and Through values on the school's alpha grades.

If the "Calculate Projected Final Grade using posted MP grades and Gradebook grades" is set to Yes, then the final grade is determined using the quality points of already posted marking periods and the quality points of the current Gradebook grade.

Question: I am trying to post an exam grade on the Post Grades screen. I see where I can type in the grade, but a Gradebook exam grade is not appearing in the next column. Why is there no Gradebook Exam Grade?
The Gradebook's exam grade can only be displayed if you have created an exam under the Exams tab on the Assignment Spreadsheet. Without an exam, Genesis does not think that you are keeping track of the exam in the Gradebook, so nothing is displayed.

Question: Why are the Gradebook's projected Final Grades and/or Semester grades not showing on the Post Grades screen?
In order for the Gradebook to calculate a final or semester grade, it needs a formula to figure it out. This can be setup on the Gradebook>Setup>Calculations screen. Once the formula has been set up, just save an assignment grades and the FG/Semester grade will recalculate based on the new calculations. See the Calculations screen for more details.

Question: There is a weighted grade field on the Post Grades that I cannot change. What is this field?
If your course has a weight code of Multiply and the weight is > 1, then this field will appear on the Post Grades screen. The weighted grade is calculated based on the grade entered by you. The calculated grade will automatically populate the weighted grade field.

Question: I do not think the final grade for the course is correct. How is it calculated?
See Grading Calculations section above.

Question: I have a merged course and all the students are not appearing on the Post Grades screen.  Why not?
Grades in genesis are posted to for a course section. For that reason, entire merged rosters are not shown for the individual Gradebooks. The teacher must switch through each of the Gradebooks to post student grades for each specific section.

Question: When a teacher goes to post grades, it says they have no sections. They have sections assigned, so why do they get this message?
Their sections have most likely not been set up to be graded. This is a post rollover task to be completed by the district.

There is a wizard you can run via Grading>Setup>Setup Guide for each of your schools. It'll autofill in this information for you. It is the "automatically assign collections to all subsections" wizard. Run it for each school, and this will be resolved (aside from some manual tweaking.)

Alternately, you can go to Scheduling>Sections and do this en masse. Change the "VIEW" dropdown to "GRADING." And click SEARCH. You will see ALL of your sections, and for each Marking Period column, you can check them off to be graded and hit "update" at the bottom of the screen. This is what the wizard is actually filling in.

Question: Why isn't the "Update all Grades" button also posting the FG with the MP4 grade automatically?
There is a second option on Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance you may have to set to YES. It is the "Allow "Update all Grades" link on Post Grades Screen to update Final Grade" option.

Seating Chart

Question: Why can I not see the Post Attendance button in the Seating Chart?
This is probably due to the fact that you need a new security right added to your account. Contact your system administrator to add Change rights to the Gradebook.Gradebook.attendance location.

Spreadsheet

Question: I have students who are not appearing with an IEP icon next to their name on the spreadsheet screen. Why is it not showing?
 There are two possible answers to this question:

1. The Profile for this course has a field called 'Display IEP Icons for Students' on the Preferences screen. This should be marked as Yes in order for the icon to display.
2. Only students with an active IEP are shown with the icon next to their names. IEP records have a start date and an end date. It is considered active if the start date ids equal to or before today and the end date is equal to or after today.
   
   

Question: I have students who are appearing in my Gradebook who should not be there. My class is not on there schedule. What can I do?
 There are two possible answers to this question:

1. Make sure that this is not a merged course. A course that gets merged will have the student's from the merged course as well as your own.
2. Sometimes during scheduling, student's schedules are locked in and then removed. If a Gradebook is initialized with students who are removed during the scheduling process, then they may be stuck in the teachers Gradebook. This is easy to resolve. First, go to the Gradebook Roster screen for the course that has the problem. Then just hit the save button. This should remove any excess students.
   
   

Question: There are students scheduled into my course but they do not appear in my Gradebook. What could be wrong?
This scenario can occur if your Gradebook is merged with another. In this case, the other Gradebook may have claimed the students in the course for themselves. You should contact the merged Gradebook's owner and find out if the "Responsible Teacher" on the Gradebook>Roster screen is set to a specific teacher that is not you.

Question: There is a student who dropped my class on the first day of school. Why are they not listed?
Students who have dropped a course prior to or on the first day of school are not shown in the teacher's Gradebook.

Question: Can I clear out dropped students from my Gradebook roster?
 If they were dropped prior to the start of the school year, you can use this task found on Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance: "This function will drop students from gradebooks in Genesis High School who are active but not scheduled into the course. If the gb status date is before the start of school, the student will be deleted from the gradebook."

Question: Can a Gradebook contain a different name/a nickname?

Yes. There is a "Gradebook Name" field on the Gradebook>Rosters tab. You can enter a nickname in this field to be used for the teacher's Gradebook.

Year Summary Screen

Question: Why are Projected Final Grades and/or Semester grades not showing on the Gradebook Year Summary screen?
In order for the Gradebook to calculate a final or semester grade, it needs a formula to figure it out. This can be setup on the Gradebook>Setup>Calculations screen (to be done by system admins). Once the formula has been set up, save an assignment grade and the FG/Semester grade will recalculate based on the new calculations. See the Calculations screen for more details.

Miscellaneous

Question: A teacher went on leave.  How do I give a new teacher access to their Gradebook?

A: The gradebook exists independent of the teacher assigned to it. To change the teacher, you need to go to Scheduling>Sections and pull up the section in question. Once you're there, swap out the teacher's name in the “Teacher” dropdown on the Subsection itself.

To add a historic teacher, click “Add Historic Teacher.”  A pop up will appear for you to select the teacher and the dates they taught.  Once you’ve entered the info, click “add historic teacher” once more to save.

Question: I ran the "This function will drop students from gradebooks in |School Name| High School who are active but not scheduled into the course. If the gb status date is before the start of school, the student will be deleted from the gradebook." tool on Gradebook>School Setup>Maintenance, but students still display in Scheduling>Sections>Modify Section. Why?

Those dropped students on the Sections screen are not affected by the Gradebook function, which only clears out gradebook rosters. What you see there is all students who have been scheduled. However, if you look at a gradebook, you will not see any of those dropped students.

Question A: I transferred a student from one course section to a different section mid year. Do their Gradebook Assignment Grades move with them?

A: Possibly (if you used the "Replace Course" button with "Transfer Grades/Class Attendance" checked when making the change.)

When a student transfers to another class in the same course, the only way to have the assignment grades transfer is if both classes are taught by the same teacher and the assignments in both classes are "linked." Gradebook averages and assignments DO NOT transfer UNLESS the same EXACT assignments exist in the new gradebook. The assignment must actually be the same one; it cannot be a new assignment created with the same name and a matching setup.

Linked assignments are created when the assignment is first published in a teacher's gradebook. When creating an assignment, a teacher can check off the other classes that the assignment should also be created in. The same assignment is then created in multiple classes and is linked between the classes, guaranteeing that they are always the same as far as preferences, etc.

Using the "Replace course" screen and having the "Transfer Grades/Class Attendance" feature selected allows the POSTED marking period grades to move with the student, but the teacher or administrator still needs to import the assignment grades into the new gradebook. (This will also only work if you use the 'replace course' option.)

Now, if the assignments are in fact the same in both the older and new Gradebooks, then you will find an import option available for the student in the new Gradebook via the student's own assignment screen: Gradebook>Gradebook>Click on Student's Name>Assignments.

If it's not the same, the teacher would have to manually enter them into the new section (if they match up - that's a district decision.)  The posted grades should move regardless - as long as it makes sense for them to move.

Question B: A user updated a kid's schedule but did not check off "Transfer Grades/Class Att." as they did so. Is there a way to push the former class' class attendance and Posted grades to the new course after the fact?

A: Yes. Go to Student Data>Modify Student>Class Attendance>By Section View. In the "Choose a Course" dropdown, select the Dropped course. In the lower right hand side, there will be a "Transfer Grades/Attendance" button:

If you click that, you will get a pop up that allows you to select the new course to push attendance and grade info to:

Select the course you need, and click Transfer.

*This is still in regards to posted Marking Period grades.  This will not push assignment grades over.

Question: Why does a teacher see a different teacher's gradebook course on the Gradebook tabs?

A: Please take a look at the teachers assigned to the teacher's logon ID via Setup-Security>Users>Modify User. If there are multiple teachers assigned there, it may just be pulling the top listed teacher.  If they should not have those extra teachers, remove them. If, for whatever reason, they should have the teachers assigned, maybe have the teacher look at the Gradebook>Home>User Profile screen. They can set a 'default teacher' so that is the first teacher they see when they log in. This will all be from the actual teacher's logon.

Question: Can I give an admin/teacher read-only access to another teacher's gradebook?

A: Yes. Go to Gradebook>School Setup>Permissions, select the USER in the first dropdown, and then search for/check off each gradebook they should have read only access to, and click SAVE PERMISSIONS. Then, as long as the user has the securable location of "gradebook.schoolsetup.gradebooks" in one of their roles, they can go to the Gradebook>School Setup>Gradebooks screen and see the gradebooks you have just granted them access to.

Question: Can teachers post discipline referrals through Gradebook?

A: Yes. The Gradebook>Gradebook>Student>Discipline screen allows you to create a discipline incident inside of Genesis. Please look at this wiki for more information.

Question: Can teachers send emails to all kids in their course section through Gradebook?

A: Yes - from the Gradebook>Setup>Email/Progress Reports screen. More info is found here.

Question: If a teacher sends an email through Genesis and a parent/guardian hits reply, who gets the reply? Will parents get a list of all the other emails as well?

A: When an email is sent from the gradebook to multiple contacts, just one email is sent at a time so each contact gets the email without knowing who else received the email. The reply will go back the teacher who sent the email.