Meeting Details: 2-4:30pm at the Technology Learning Center, District Education Center
Schools Represented: Bemis, Boyd, Casey, Carter, Curtis, Eisenhower, Fitzgerald, Henry, Jehue, Kucera, Trapp
eSchool Gradebook Review: One of the goals in the District Educational Technology plan is to evaluate and implement a common gradebook program (either districtwide or across all schools at the same level). To begin this process, the committee conducted a review of the gradebook functionality available in the existing eSchool system. This functionality is currently de-activated, but could be activated if it meets the needs of our district. Committee members and several IT Department employees participated in a phone conference with a Pentamation company representative to preview how the gradebook component of eSchool functions.
- Configuration and System Management: An overview was provided on how the gradebook component of eSchool would function "on the back-end." The following items need to be configured at the district or building (school) level on the system prior to implementation.
- Categories: These must be set up at the building level. They can be copied from one building to another. Typically, these include items such as homework, tests, etc. Teachers cannot create categories - they can only select from the list set up at the building level.
- Grading Scales: All grading scales and their "level tables" are set up at the building level. This includes scales such as A-F, 1-4, Pass/Fail, and unique scales used for special needs students.
- Terms: The grading periods must be established at the administrative level as well as the policy for calculating combination of grades for a marking period. For example, if the semester grade will be a 50-50 weight of the quarter 1 and 2 grades, this must be configured. Teachers can be given access to adjust the weighting.
- Alpha Marks: These are set up at the administrative level to allow teachers to enter codes such as EXC for excused in their gradebook. How these codes are treated must also be configured at this level. Examples were excused is not counted toward grade, but missing is counted as a zero.
- Teacher Access Options: From the administrative side of the system, teachers can be allowed/denied access to various options including calculation (round or truncate scores) and grade scale selections, ability to override students' calculated grades.
- Teacher Perspective: A demonstration of the gradebook from the teacher's perspective was provided by the company representative.
- Define Categories: To begin use of the gradebook, the teacher selects the categories of assignments to include in the gradebook. (The categories are defined at the building level, so the teacher cannot add categories.) The teacher can choose to use points-based grading or category weighting. For each category selected, the teacher determines the weight, number of lowest scores to drop, and how missing scores are handled (count as zero or exclude from calculation).
- Grading Scale: For each class, the teacher can choose a grading scale from the scales set up on the administrative side of the system. The teacher can also assign a different grading scale to individual students, such as a modified grading scale for special needs students.
- Entering Assignments: The teacher enters the date assigned (optional), date due, category, extra credit (optional), maximum points, weight within the category. When the Parent Access Center is used, the teacher can also choose to publish the assignment and/or scores and attach related files.
- Entering Scores: The traditional grid display does retain the header at the top and student information on the left as the teacher scrolls down/right. A Default Grade button provides auto-fill functionality and teachers can enter established codes such as EXC for excused.
- Notes: Teachers can use the notes icon to keep general notes about a student (ie: behavior, conferences, etc.). Each note is dated and can be published to the Parent Access Center. Teachers can also add notes to individual assignment scores for a student. It was not clear if these notes will appear on any of the reports or in the parent view.
- Reports: The Student Detail report provides an individual student report of all assignments and their scores by category. The Missing Assignments report also provides individual reports. The Score Threshold report shows which students scored above/below a teacher-defined level on a selected assignment or in their overall class grade - useful for identifying students in need of intervention. All reports are retained in a report list by date for easy retrieval and verification of reporting frequency.
- Term Grades: Teachers can choose to load term grades automatically from the gradebook and can also override individual grades. Grades that combine multiple terms (ie: semester may be a 50-50 combination of quarter 1 and 2 grades) are calculated based on school level settings. It appeared that teachers could not set the gradebook to continue grading across multiple terms - current grade calculations are based on current term only. The committee expressed several concerns about this - many teachers set their gradebook to continue throughout the semester, and the current grade would not be an accurate reflection of the semester grade. (Reports may show a student is doing well in Q2, but when the quarters are combined for the final semester grade, it may actually be lower if the student struggled in Q1.)
- Standards: This gradebook does not currently support the use of standards. The committee discussed the possibility of setting up categories by standard or major concepts instead of by assignment type, but this could be a very cumbersome list since each subject area at each grade level may have a unique list. The company representative indicated some upcoming enhancements may provide standards-related functions - he will investigate and report back on this.
- Elementary teachers expressed concerns about grading by standard because the list of standards they must address across all content areas is very lengthy. Concern was also expressed regarding the elementary report card not reflecting standards-based grading.
Other Gradebook Programs: Brent Copeland at Kucera discussed how he uses the standards-based grading tools of Easy Grade Pro and offered to provide a demonstration at a future meeting.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:30pm. The next meeting date will be sent out to committee representatives.
Reminders: Committee members should be evaluating the two cyberbullying online courses and submitting their feedback via the discussion board on the committee's eChalk group page.
