The Book Bag : Gradebook

FAWeb Assignments

Nate Hall — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:02:00 GMT

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...

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

Willow Schultz — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:07:00 GMT

Reasons why a class will not appear in Faculty Access for the Web Gradebook (BB76016):

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

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.

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.

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

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

Nate Hall — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:06:00 GMT

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!!

Get FAWeb Ready Ahead of Time

Nate Hall — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:49:00 GMT

I hate to bring it up too early, but the end of summer is fast approaching and before you know it, students and teachers will be crowding the halls on the first day of school. Teachers will be using FAWeb to set up their Gradebooks to track assignment grades and attendance, and they will want everything to be working perfectly the first day (and from then on) when they start entering their assignments for the year. As the school's head of IT/Help desk/Master-of-all-things-computing, this probably falls into your responsibility realm. To make sure teachers can access their Gradebooks for next year, check out a couple of options by logging into FAWeb as Supervisor or an account with supervisor rights. It won't take more than a few minutes, and it'll save you endless troubleshooting time later.

When you log in, start with the Setup button at the top. The first screen controls the available Academic Years as well as which parts of those years are available. Is the upcoming year available for Grades and Attendance? If not, it might be a good idea to turn it on. Otherwise teachers will not be able to set up their Gradebooks and they will then call you for help! Check out the other years and make sure only the years you want visible are available. For example, do teachers need to see information from 2001-2002? I'd think not, and it might save them (and you) a headache should anyone accidentally start entering/modifying grades for that year. Oh, and make sure you save your changes!!

Another area to check is the Marking Columns section. Here, you can set which marking columns are visible and/or editable for teachers. Before you change the columns, make sure the year, school, and session filters at the top are set to the correct year! It doesn't do any good to turn on the marking columns for last year, does it? If you make any changes, be sure to save them so you don't have to come back and do it again later.

While you're signed in with god rights, check out Setup. Do you need to change any email settings? What about the calculations for teachers or setting up comment reviewer options? You can adjust them here, and within a few minutes, the beginning of the year in FAWeb is ready. If you take care of this ahead of time, it'll give you a precious few more minutes to practice your vitamin D absorption technique before heading back inside the school building for the fall. Enjoy the rest of your summer and check back for more as the school year draws near.

Posting Grades, Comments, and Skills from FAWeb

Marshall Taft — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:12:00 GMT

All of the teachers have entered their grades, skills, and comments in FAWeb and are ready to go. Now you need to post them to Registrar's Office so you can run performance categories, calculate GPAs or run report cards and transcripts!

To post grades, skills, and/or comments select Administration, Post from FAWeb in Registrar's Office. Next choose the School, Academic Year, and Session. Mark the option to update the posting status, which changes the Gradebook posting status, mark the appropriate checkboxes beside the items from Gradebook you would like to post, such as Grades, Comments, and Skills, and the marking columns to post from and to.

On the Filters tab, select to filter by Faculty/Staff, Classes, Courses, Departments etc. Once you select your filters, click Preprocessing Report. This report includes any exceptions that will prevent the information from posting. Reference how to troubleshoot the exceptions to post successfully.

Two common exceptions are:

"Class not marked as ready to post"
This exception can be easily resolved by marking the class(es) ready to post individually or globally.
"Class Not Rated for [marking column]."
This should not be viewed as an error unless the class (such as a lower school English class) should award skill ratings.

Out for now...

Change the Way You See the Kids in Your Gradebook

Nate Hall — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:10:00 GMT

And no, I'm not talking about glasses or adjusting the color on your monitor! I have noticed that teachers want to see different information in their Gradebooks in FAWeb, such as a student's nickname or their grade level. Well, I just wanted to let you all know that there is a way to display this information. When signed in to FAWeb, select Options at the top of the screen. There's an option labeled Display student name using with a drop-down with a few options. The options are: First Name Last Name; Nickname Last Name; First Name Last Name, Grade level; Nickname Last Name, Grade level. Pretty easy, right? Setting this option should also make it easier to tell your students apart, especially if some of them go by nicknames in class.

Now, I have just one caveat: selecting the Nickname options only shows a Nickname if there is one entered on the student's record in Education Edge. So if you have a kid in the classroom whom you've dubbed "The Smelly One," then that nickname won't show up unless it's on the record. If you're really good friends with your registrar, they might be persuaded to add this in for you, but that part is up to you!

Out for now...