Button-based Homepage and Grading

[jay_bachhuber]

Hi folks,  

  We're currently designing our courses for elementary school users, and have run into an issue I'm hoping someone can help with. I really like the button-based homepages I've seen where students access all their subjects from within the same course. When we looked into this more, however, it seems there's no way to output grades for the different subjects with they're not separate courses. I'm trying to understand if it's possible to link from one course to another so that we could have a Homeroom course with a homepage that students use to access all their other courses, or if cross-listing could be solution. Does anyone know if there's a way to do this? Or am I missing an obvious solution to all subjects in the same course grading issue? We're using PowerSchool as out SIS if that's relevant.

Thanks a lot.

[gail_bliss]

Is the goal here for easy access, for the student, to all their classes or easy grading for the teacher?  If it is the first, did you try adding and "external link" to the button that would take them to the individual class?  Let's say they have Math, English and Science buttons and they click on the Math button.  This would then take them to the Math class.  In the Math Class you could create buttons on the front page for their modules.  We are currently considering the integration with Powerschool and I will be watching this post to see what others have to say.  Great question!

[jay_bachhuber]

Thanks for the suggestion. We're going to experiment more when the school year ends. Using external links could work, but I wonder it it'll end up creating it's own complexity. The student would need to open assignment links in new tabs in their browsers, then return to the original tab regularly. That might be difficult for younger students. The other piece (which we're also having trouble with) is creating one "source of truth" for all the assignments due on a given day. In general, using different courses for each subject works well for our 5th and 6th graders, but they definitely having a hard time keeping track of what they're responsible for completing each day. We'll keep trying and sharing what we learn. I'd love for this to be a thread where schools share their approaches. 

[Steve_Hartnett]

Hi @jay_bachhuber, 

We had similar questions at the beginning of the school year and we did a few tests to see what works. We used a 4th grade teacher's homeroom course and cross-listed her other courses into the homeroom course (math, language arts, social studies, etc.). The teacher wanted a "one-stop shop" for her students. This worked for the teacher, but when assigning assignments, she needed to make sure that she assigned to the specific section-subject (in order for the grade pass-back to work properly with PowerSchool). In theory, I believe that you can simply link from a homeroom course to another course using the course's link. The students need to be enrolled in the courses that the homeroom course is linked to or they will not be able to access its content. I hope this information helps.

[jay_bachhuber]

Hi @Steve_Hartnett,

   Thanks for the suggestion. I'll have to look into cross listing more. I know that in our current setup, course links don't work between courses (external links should), but maybe if they're cross listed it would. I'll post again as we learn more.