Comment Reviewing in FAWeb

Faculty Access for the Web comment reviewing allows peers, department heads, administrators, or advisors to review and approve teachers' gradebook comments before they are posted to The Education Edge. It's like having your own staff of editors to ensure you deliver the highest quality and most accurate comments! Let's take a closer look:

Before staff can review and approve comments, you must complete the following:

1. Decide who will have rights to review. To give a faculty member rights to comments, mark the appropriate school checkboxes on his record's Restrictions 1 tab.
2. Assign the appropriate group of reviewers for each school. The Supervisor selects the group on the Miscellaneous page in Faculty Access for the Web setup. The following groups are available for review:
   • Peer reviewers are faculty/staff members with rights to access Gradebooks for the school in which a class is taught.
   • Administrators are faculty/staff members whose security records include administrator rights for Faculty Access for the Web. You grant administrator rights by marking the Has administrator rights in Faculty Access for the Web checkbox on the Online Security tab of a user's security record in Administration.
   • Advisors are faculty/staff members with the Current Advisor checkbox marked on the Bio 1 tab of their Faculty/Staff records.
   • Department heads are faculty/staff members whose records list a Position on the Bio 2 tab that matches the position selected for department heads. You can select the position that designates department heads on the NetClassroom Registration Setup page in Configuration and the Miscellaneous page in Faculty Access for the Web Setup.
3. Set up teachers' gradebooks for review.
   • If comment reviewers are based on peer review, teachers must select the faculty members who will review their Gradebook comments:
     1. In Gradebook, click Setup.
     2. Click Reviewer Setup on the navigation bar.
     3. Select the teachers to review the comments. Select Yes in the Can edit column if the teacher can edit comments.
   • To make identifying grades with comments easier, click Customize on the Gradebook page and mark the Indicate Comments Present checkbox.
   • When a comment is ready for review, teachers must change the Comment Status on the comment screen to Ready for Review.

Now that comment review is set up, it's time to get those comments report card ready! To review comments, the reviewer teacher logs into Faculty Access for the Web, selects Gradebook, and then clicks the Comment Approval tab. He can review comments by Course, Teacher, or Student. If he has edit rights, he can edit the comment in Comment box, or, if he only has reviewer rights, he can enter his comments in the Reviewer's Notes box.

To complete the review process, the reviewer teacher changes the comment status to Approved and then saves and closes the comment.

Your October Forums Roundup

 Here's your forum post roundup for October:

• Student Billing - Posting to General Ledger
• New Best Practices Guide
  
• Building a query for the Florida Bright Futures import
• New and Improved Knowledgebase Solution
• GPA Calculations when Weighting by Translation Table on Marking Column
  
• FAW external access help

Itty Bitty Timesavers

Sometimes the little things make the biggest difference. There are lots of shortcuts in The Education Edge, and after all, those fractions of seconds add up to minutes. Let us look at a few of them:

Export Preview: Use the preview button to review the first 15 records included in an export. You should be able to get a good idea if the correct data is going to export from this preview. The few seconds it takes to preview is betting than waiting for hundreds of records to export, opening the file in Excel only to find you forgot to include the last name field.

F3: Press F3 in any date field to automatically enter the current day's date.

Military Time: Enter military time in any time field and it will automatically convert to a.m. or p.m. Plus it's fun to enter 15 o'clock instead of 3:00 p.m.

F7: Press F7 to open a fields' table entry list. Use this to clean up table entries on the fly, and you no longer have to second guess the fields in the table.

Open Records from a Query: Query results aren't just a list of records; double-click the record in the results to open it. If you want to view the next record in the query results while that record is still open, click use the arrow buttons on that record's action bar to scroll through the records.

Selecting a default search field: You may search for a record by the Student ID, while others may search using the last name. Have each user select the default search field on the record screens and open records faster!

User Options: Never underestimate the time saving powers of your user options. Something as simple as setting the page the program opens to can make your day.

Do you have any other shortcuts? Share them by posting a comment! 

What Do You Want to See in the FAWeb Support Roundtable?

We're having a Faculty Access for the Web Support Roundtable in early December and want you to help decide the content. We've set up some voting options such as posting to Grades, Supervisor and teacher setup, and comment approval, or you can simply reply to the poll with your own requests. Vote today!

Student Billing Reconciliation Redux

Greetings faithful blog readers!

We recently held a customer round table regarding the fabulous topic of reconciling Student Billing to General Ledger.  This was the first of many sessions we hope to hold discussing popular topics in Student Billing.  Our support team is working hard to develop these sessions for all products, and to that end, I thought it would be a great idea to gather some feedback on what we developed for the Student Billing session I conducted.  Below are links to our FAQ page with the Powerpoint slideshow and the recorded discussion with video screen capture directly from our live session.  Check these out!

Student Billing FAQ and Reconciliation Roundtable

I will be adding more reconciliation tips and tricks to future blogs.  Tell me what you think about what we have now for Student Billing and keep your ear to the ground on our forums to sign up for future sessions, they have been filling up quickly!

Cheers!

Charles

Report Cards 101

You don't have to be a graphic designer to create a spiffy report card that will impress your students and their parents. Your design dreams can come true within The Education Edge!

Before logging in, think about your report card's appearance. Do you want multiple columns on the same page? Do you want the school logo included? Should you include attendance and credits? For some inspiration, check out our shared sample report cards on the forums. Have an idea of what you want? Let's hop over to Mail, Forms, open a report card parameter, and get started!

On the General tab, select the basics, i.e., the year to run the report card, the school, the term, and the session. On the bottom of the screen, select the paper size, the orientation, and the text font style and size. Your selections won't override the font already entered in grade comments.

Now let's head to the Details tab to set up the meat of your report card. You select the sections to include such as Academic Summary, Attendance, and Activities.

Let's take a closer look at the Course section because everyone needs one on their report card.

1. Highlight the Courses row and click Open to see the treasure chest of tabs!
2. On the General tab, there are more formatting options. Select the options you think will look awesome on your report card.
3. On the Columns tab, select the columns to display under the courses section. Some good choices are Course Name and Marking Column. After you add the Marking Column column, select the grade format and whether or not to show attempted and awarded credits.
4. You can select to print skills, comments, and class notes on the respective tabs.

When you're done with the Courses section, click OK to return to the Details tab where you can add other sections. The available columns and details will depend on your selected section.

Look no further than the Summary Notes tab to include some of the same sections as the Details tab in other areas of the report card such as the right side or the bottom of the page. You can also add freeform notes here, which is great for grading scales or any other information that must be on your report cards. Keep in mind if you choose to print Summary Notes on the bottom: they will print on each page.

Use the Filters tab to select the students and courses to include, the Attributes tab to add, update, or delete student attributes, and the Addresses tab to select the address that will print on the report card.

On the Format tab, you can select the header layout and format the student and teacher names. In the Header section, you can add your school logo image and select the school and student information that displays within the header.

Ready to check out your work? To save time, go back to the Filters tab and select one student to test on. If your previewed report card isn't exactly what you wanted, don't fret; adjust the parameters until you've achieved your vision!

Need tamper resistant paper just in case Caroline tries to erase her F? Check out our selection of forms.

Happy voting everybody!

List Lady: Lists of Posting from FAWeb barriers

1. Overwrite Existing Entries was not marked when posting
2. The class is not marked Ready to post
• The posting status can be globally changed (BB555812)
3. The process was canceled during the post
   
4. Only the preprocessing report was run instead of the actual post
5. The course is marked as no longer offered
6. The Student has withdrawn or transferred to a different class

New Student Billing Best Practices Guide

The Student Billing Best Practices Guide has been a long time running and well worth the wait. It provides your with best practice recommendations to enhance tracking, reporting, and data-entry capabilities in Student Billing, and covers effective methods to manage:

• Recordkeeping
• Tuition Billing
• Incidental Billing
• Collections
• Reporting
• Reconciliation
• End-of-Year Processes
• Internal Controls

Keep this guide amongst your most valuable prizes, like the Hope Diamond, Stanley Cup, and Number One Dime.

Mail Mania: Creating a Conditional Word Merge

You've learned how to create a Blackbaud Simple Word Merge. It's pretty simple, eh? Let us take it a step further and look at the Blackbaud Conditional Word Merge. The basic difference between a simple and conditional merge is that a conditional merge generates letters based on a specific field, such as current status, while a simple merge generates the same letter content for everybody. A conditional merge prevents you from having to set up multiple export parameters and create queries to go along with those exports.

For example, let's base a conditional mail merge on status. Applicants with an accepted status receive one letter, waitlisted applicants receive another, and denied applicants receive a third letter.

The conditional merge starts out like the Blackbaud Simple Word Merge, you use a query in an export and select Blackbaud Conditional Word Merge as the format. On the Output tab, you'll select all the merge fields you'll use in the letter, including your conditional field, even if it's not used as a merge field in the letters. In the example above, we'll select Current Status because our letters are dependent on applicants' current status.

To start create your letters, click Conditional merge wizard in the export. You'll see a list of your selected fields. Highlight your conditional field, click Next, and then click New Document. Here's where you set up your condition. In our example, applicants receive a different letter based on their status, so for the first letter, select the condition of equal to, and then select the Accepted status. Enter a description for the letter (hint: Accepted Letter beautifully describes it), and click Edit Merge Document. Enter your letter with the merge fields, click Save and Return to EE7, and then repeat the process until all your letters are entered.

The rest is identical to the Blackbaud Simple Word Merge magic we worked earlier! A la peanut butter sandwiches!

Mail Mania: Creating a Simple Mail Merge with NetClassroom Usernames and Passwords

Now that you've created your NetClassroom parent videos and customized our parent tutorials to your school's specifications, you probably want to send out a letter including this information and student and parent NetClassroom logins.

To create a custom merge letter, first create the query of students or parents you want to mail, and then include the query in an export. Select Blackbaud Simple Mail Merge as the export format. Let us take a moment to explain the naming convention: Blackbaud because the letter is created, edited, and saved within your Blackbaud software, Simple because it's easy, and Mail Merge because that's what you're doing!

After you've added your query on the Filters tab, select the Output tab and add any other fields, such as student name, address, grade level. If you are creating the letter from a student export and want to include the student's NetClassroom login information, select Online ID and Online Password from the Student grouping. To include parent login information in the same letter, select Online User ID and Online Password from the Relationship section. Oh, don't forget to select the specific parental relationships, otherwise you might accidentally export Endora's login information instead of Samantha's. If you're using an individual export, then you'll reverse those instructions, i.e. filter on the student relationships, such as son or daughter.

Your fields are selected, and now it's time for the merge letter! Click the Edit Word Merge and you'll get a blank Word document. For the folks using Office 2007, select the Add-Ins tab. For those playing at home on version 2003 or lower, the insert fields drop-downs will be on your screen.

To insert a merge field, place your cursor where you want the merge field, and then click Insert Education Edge field, followed by your field selection. Continue this until you've selected all your merge fields, and then click Save and Return to EE7 to Merge, which saves your merge document to the database. You won't be able to access this document through Word; the only way you can edit this document is to open the export and click Edit Merge Document. To generate your documents, click Merge Now on your export screen.

Next time we'll build off the simple mail merge and look at conditional mail merges.

List Lady: Classes Not Appearing in FAWeb Gradebook: PART II

1. Has the student taken the course multiple times? Check the business rule for grades and see if the course should be included if it is taken multiple times
2. Is the student included? Check the Students SPE and make there is one for the year selected on the GPA calculation
3. Does the student have the status selected in business rules for Grades and attendance
4. Does the course have a grading record for the selected year on the GPA calculation
5. On the course grading tab, is the GPA calculation included?

FAWeb Assignments

I promised I would return and write a follow-up to my last post explaining categories, and here I am, true to my word!  Well, maybe a couple of days slower than I originally planned, but better late than never, right? Last time we went over a few options in Categories; this time we'll take a look at Assignments. 

Let's start with the different assignment dates.  Most of these are self-explanatory; Student Date Due is the last day the assignment will be accepted, Show Assignment and Show Grade control when the information appears in NetClassroom, and Grades Date Due reminds you to enter the assignment grade.  After that date, the gradebook icon turns red on your Home page.  This ensures there's a grade showing when students check their grades in NetClassroom, so they won't bombard you with questions about how they did on the last test...or it at least reduces the amount of questions you get.  I'm back in school now, and I'll admit I want to know my grades ASAP and am probably guilty of asking that question a time or two myself, I won't lie .

If you use NetClassroom and don't want a particular assignment or grade to show, then leave the Grades Date Due date blank.  You may have reading assignments that don't have a graded assignment associated with them, but you would like the assignment to show up so students know what reading will be discussed in class.  You can enter a Student Date Due so it will show in NetClassroom.  Of course, what shows in NetClassroom depends on your assignment feature setup in Configuration. If you have dates entered and the assignments aren't showing for your students, you might want to check with your administrator to make sure the assignment option is marked for students.

As I mentioned last time, factors can be used to weight different elements in a group.  You can also use factors to give weight to assignments in a category.  For instance, you have a midterm exam you want to count twice as much as a normal test. You can give the midterm a factor of 2 and the other tests a factor of 1, and the calculation includes this factor.  Here's an example:

Tests A, B, and D are regular tests and Test C is a midterm counting twice as much.  I'll assign the factors as follows:

Test A, B, D: 1
Test C: 2

Erica got a 75 on Test A, an 80 on Test B, an 85 on Test C, and an 81 on Test D.

Test Average = ((Test A grade * factor of 1) + (Test B grade * factor of 1) + (Test C grade * factor of 2) + (Test D grade * a factor of 1))/(Sum of factors)
Test Average = (75 + 80 + (85 *2) + 81)/5 = 81.2

Without weighting the midterm, her test average comes out to 80.25.

As you can see, factors can come in handy if you need to put more emphasis on one assignment in a category.  But if they all should count the same, just leave the factors set at 1.

Hope this made setting up your Gradebook a little easier this year and answered some questions you might have.  If you found the information helpful, or even if you didn't, let me know by leaving a comment.  If you have other suggestions about something you'd like me to write about, please feel free to post something back to me and I'll get to it.  Till next time...

NetClassroom Parent Videos

List Lady: Reasons A Class Does Not Appear in FAWeb Gradebook

1. Course record does not have Grading Information for the current academic year and session:
• In order to check this, open the course record, go to the Grading tab and make sure there is information for the current academic year and session
• If information exists, open the Grading information, and ensure at least one marking column is marked graded in the grid at the bottom of the screen
2. Course is not marked to be graded for the marking column associated with the selected term:
   
• In the Course record, open the current year's grading information. Make sure the Graded? checkbox is marked for the marking column associated with the term.
  
• Not sure how marking columns are associated with Terms?  You can look at the marking column association in Configuration, Register Setup, Marking Column Sets.
3. Teacher is not assigned to teach the class:
• In order to see the teacher assigned to the class, open the course, go to the Class tab, and double click on the class.  On the main page of the class, you can see what teacher is selected to teach the class.  If you would like to change the teacher for the class check out BB197906.
4. Students are not enrolled in the class:
• Go to the class record (using the steps above), and select the Student tab.  If students are checked enrolled, they should appear in Gradebook.  If students need to be scheduled in the class, check out BB147150
5. Supervisor has not unlocked the academic year, session and marking column associated with the Gradebook:
• Log into Faculty Access for the Web as Supervisor. In Setup, select the Academic Year and Marking Column and make sure the correct information is marked Yes to View and Edit.

FAWeb Categories Setup Explained

Probably one of the most important aspects of setting up FAWeb if you are a teacher is adding assignments to your Gradebook so you can keep track of how the students are doing in your class. Lazing around on the beach and being out in the sun can start to fry your memory of how FAWeb works, (it even happens to me over the weekends and I don't get a whole summer vacation!) so here's a quick review of settings in the setup and what each means to you the teacher. I'll start with the Categories, and next time I'll cover Assignments.

When you click Categories, pay attention to the drop-down at the top of the grid labeled Determine marking column grades using: <category averages> or <assignment grades>.  Now take a deep breath; I'm going to ask you to make a decision.  I know it's early in the year, but you can do it!  Here it is: how do you want to calculate your grades? Does each assignment have a category then each category makes up a portion of the marking column grade, or do all the assignments go into one bucket and then averaged?  The category averages option might look like: homework 15%, quizzes 25%, and tests 60%.

Before explaining the Calculation type drop-down, let me cover the Factor column.  Factors are used to give weight to each category relative to other categories.  Using the above examples, we might set the factors for homework to 15, quizzes to 25, and tests to 60.  The total of the factors comes to 100, so each category is worth its weight divided by the total of the factors.  Therefore, homework would be worth 15 out of 100, or 15/100, or 15%; quizzes would be worth 25 out of 100, or 25/100, or 25%; tests would be worth 60 out of 100, or 60/100, or 60%.  Although our example adds up to 100, your factors do not have to add up to 100.  Remember the fun of reducing fractions in math class?  We can use factors of 3, 5, and 12 for homework, quizzes, and test categories respectively and get the same results:

1.  3+5+12=20 total factor
2.  3/20=15% for homework
3.  5/20=25% for quizzes
4.  12/20=60% for tests

Keep in mind 0 is also a legitimate option for a factor and, as you might guess, it will take that factor and divide it by the total: 0/20=0%, so that category would not count towards the marking column grade at all!  And of course if you leave all of the factors at zero, you might run into the problem below, so be careful !

Finally, let's look at the Calculation type drop-down. You can select Total points and Percentages. Total points divides the points a student receives by the total available points for each category.  For example: you have 5 homework assignments worth 10, 10, 20, 25, and 50 points, and a student receives grades of 9, 7, 15, 17, and 34 points respectively on each assignment. 

Total points grade = (Sum of points received)/(Sum of total possible points)

Grade = (9+7+15+17+34)/(10+10+20+25+50) = (82/115) = 71.3%

The Percentages option uses the percentage of each individual assignment and then averages those percentages.  This calculation may sound similar to the Total Points but can give different results. For example:

Percentage grade = ((points received on assignment 1)/(points of assignment 1) + (points received on assignment 2)/(points of assignment 2) +...)/(total # of assignments)

Grade = ((9/10) + (7/10) + (15/20) + (17/25) + (34/50))/5
Grade = (.9 + .7 + .75 + .68 + .68)/5 = 74.2%

Whew...sorry, that was a little long!  But hope that helps you out in making these decisions on your Gradebook settings and provides you with a quick reference to use when setting up your Gradebooks.  Check back for a quick review of the Assignments page in Gradebook setup.  Oh, and welcome back to school!!