Advanced Skills Setup

For More Information: Also see the Using Advanced Skills page for more information regarding Advanced Skills Grading and all of its features 

School Setup

Once your district has the Advanced Skills Grading Feature, you will be able to turn it on by going to the Gradebook -> School Setup -> Advanced Skills Setup screen.  

This screen provides you with one place to complete your grading setup. 

The screen is divided into 4 sections. 

Activation

This section allows to turn on Advanced Skills Grading within the gradebook and it allows to turn on the skills screens within the Parents Module.  Once you turn on Advanced Skills Grading, teachers will be able to add multiple skills to each assignment, grade each skill within the assignment and have access to the Skills spreadsheet.  

By activating the Parents Module screens, parents will be able to see the individual grades for each skill within an assignment and see a breakdown of each skill.  All of these features within the gradebook and in the Parent Module will be covered later.

Grade Scales

The Grade scales allow you to configure how you would like to calculate your overall Skill Grades.  This section allows you to create a Grade Scale for each of the grade sets being used to grade skills.  You can click the Create button for each grade set to create the scale.  You can edit the Grade Scale by clicking the Edit link.  

See the Grade Scales section below for more information about how they are used.

Grade Scales under Advanced Skills Setup

Role Security

Only the gradebook.gradebook.student.skills securable location should be added to your users.  This allows the teachers to see the Skills screen under the student within the Gradebook.  You can add the location roles under this section.  All roles with access to the gradebook are displayed on this screen and you can add the location to the role simply by clicking on the Add Location button for the role. 

Role Security under Advanced Skills Setup

Mass Updates

When using Advanced Skills, you may want the gradebook to be displayed differently for teachers.  We provide 3 tools to allow you to mass update your teachers.  

For instance, you may want your teachers to always land on the Skills spreadsheet once you have enabled Advanced Skills.

These tools provide you the ability to update all your teachers at once.  See below for specific information about each Mass Update tool.    

Setting up and Understanding Grade Scales

Grade Scales are based on the grades that you assign to specific skills.  An example for this would be a math skill that “Analyzes patterns and relationships”.  The school has decided that teachers should give a student a O, S, N or U for this skill each time it is graded.  

A Grade Scale must be created for this grade set. A grade is the value under on the Alpha Grades column on the Grading → Setup → Skills screen.  In this case, the grade set consists of O, S, N, and U.  The Grade Scale will have a point value associated with it as well as the from and though point range. This allows an overall score for the specific skill to be determined at the end of the marking period. 

In our example above, a student receives a N in the first assignment and then has back-to-back assignments with an S.  The overall score in this case would be calculated by grabbing the median of the points assigned to each of the scores given to the student.  The overall score would be decided based on the from and through values of each grade.

Grade Scale Setup

 The grades for the Grade Scale will be automatically created based on the "Alpha Grades" column on the Grading → Setup → Skills → Skills in Groups screen. For instance, if the valid alpha grades are O, S, N and U, those grade will be automatically created when creating the scale. The Points, From and Thru values will all be automatically created as well.

These can be changed once the scale has been created.

Helpful Tip: A Grade Scale should be configured for each of the grade sets available to the skills so that an overall skill score can be calculated.  A skill without a corresponding Grade Scale will NOT be able to be graded.

Mass Updates Tools

Mass Update Default Spreadsheet

When teachers enter the gradebook for one their classes, by default the screen they see is the Assignment Spreadsheet.  This screen allows your teachers to see all of the assignments and the overall assignment grades for each one, but lacks the skill grades that have been given to the students.  

When using Advanced Skills Grading, it is highly recommended to use the Skills Spreadsheet in order to get the most out of the feature.  This screen allows teachers to not only view skill grades of all of their assignments, but also allows them to grade the skills directly on the spreadsheet.  

When running this tool to update the spreadsheet, its is important to know the following:

• The Default Spreadsheet is set for the User, not the Teacher.  This means that the default spreadsheet will apply to all of the the users schools.
• Users must have a Home School of the school that you are updating and have rights to a gradebook screen in the school.

Select the default spreadsheet and then it the "Update Default Spreadsheet" button in order to run the tool.

Mass Update 'Display Student MP Averages' in Teacher Profiles

The Assignment Spreadsheet and Grade Assignment screens both show the student's Overall MP Average which is based on the each assignment's overall grade.  When using Advanced Skills Grading, the measure of student's performance is based on the progression within each skill, not an overall MP Grade.  This tool will remove the Overall MP Grade from the Assignment Spreadsheet and the Grade Assignment screens.

This tool updates the profiles for all teachers in the current school.  

Select No from the dropdown and then hit the 'Update Display MP Average in all Profiles' button to run the tool.

Mass Update 'Display Assignment Overall Grade' in Teacher Profiles

The Grade Assignment screen allows teachers to grade an assignment with an over all score.  When using Advanced Skills Grading, teachers may want to only grade the skills and not give an overall grade for the assignment.  In this case, the tool allows you to remove the overall grade column from the Grade Assignment screen.

This tool updates the profiles for all teachers in the current school.  

Select No from the dropdown and then hit the 'Update Display Assignment Overall Grade in all Profiles' button to run the tool.

Fo More Information: Also see the Using Advanced Skills page for more information regarding Advanced Skills Grading and all of its features