[ARCHIVED] Assignment Groups in Different Terms - How we provide our teachers an option

[nathan_campbell]

Hello all,

I just posted the following as a reply to an archived Idea entitled adjust change grade setup by term and perhaps others in the K-12 arena grapple with this issue and would like to brainstorm possible options for their teachers.

In Brookline Public Schools here in Brookline, Massachusetts, our District Canvas Team came up with a novel solution to the issue of how assignment group weights are fixed for the duration of a course.

 We know some teachers need to have the flexibility to modify assignment group weights term-to-term.

• Example: In Q1 at the high school there is not mid-term, but in Q2 there is and teachers would like to increase the weight of the 'Assessment' category due to the presence of this larger formative assessment.

At the same time we have many teachers who do not need this ability. These teachers set assignment group weights and leave them for the entire year. This is more the practice in our middle grades.

In order to provide folks the option to choose either/or, what we do is we make 5 courses for a teacher: One course is set to a full year (FY) calendar while the others are set to quarter-based (Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4) calendars. Then the teacher chooses at the beginning of the year to publish the FY course or the Q1 course (subsequently publishing the Q2-Q4 courses as the year progresses). Additionally, for 9-12 teachers, we provide a 3rd option: They can request to have a semester-based course made for them manually because the Full Year and Quarter-based classes do not support their flow.

After teachers make their selection they can then delete all the other course shells so theirs Courses list is more manageable.

This process put more work on us at the district level, but it leads to more choices for our teachers, providing them with the best-set shells possible at the beginning of the year.

I'm attaching the one-sheet that we've drafted for teachers that we walk them through in the fall so they understand their options and any applicable caveats.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Nathan