Engrade Online Gradebook Training and Professional ... · Engrade is a free, online gradebook that...

Engrade Online Gradebook Training and Professional Development

Created by Andrew Wille

Presented at The High School for Math, Science, and Engineering at City College

June 10, 2010

ANDREWWILLE.COM/PEDAGOGY Page 2 of 23

Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3

Signing up for Engrade .................................................................................................................................. 3

Creating a class ............................................................................................................................................. 5

Adding Assignments. ................................................................................................................................... 11

Entering Student Scores .......................................................................................................................... 13

Adding additional classes using a template ................................................................................................ 15

Additional Features ..................................................................................................................................... 17

Calendar .................................................................................................................................................. 17

Attendance .............................................................................................................................................. 18

Comments ............................................................................................................................................... 19

Did you know you had a website? .......................................................................................................... 20

Getting Students and parents to Sign up .................................................................................................... 20

Generating Reports ..................................................................................................................................... 22

Student Reports ...................................................................................................................................... 22

Missing Work Reports ............................................................................................................................. 22

Features for the Tech-Savvy ....................................................................................................................... 22

Export to Excel ........................................................................................................................................ 22

Bulk Enter ................................................................................................................................................ 22

Print Gradebook ...................................................................................................................................... 22

RSS Feed for Homework Assignments .................................................................................................... 23

Messaging ............................................................................................................................................... 23


Introduction Engrade is a free, online gradebook that records class data, calculates grades, and communicates these grades to parents and students.

Signing up for Engrade 1. Go to www.engrade.com 2. Click “Sign up – It’s Free!” to create a new account. In the future when you already have an

account, you will click “Login” in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

http://www.engrade.com/


3. Click “Sign up for a Teacher Account”

4. Fill out the following information about yourself.

Tips: For “Your name:” write your name how you would like your students to see it. Choose an email address that you check frequently such as your hsmse.org email address. Choose a username that you can remember such as your username for your hsmse email. Make sure your password is a strong password, meaning it contains a combination of letters, numbers, capital letters, and symbols.


5. Account Verification Fill out the numbers/letters that you see and retype your password. This information lets engrade know that you are a real human being and not a computer program.

Congratulations! You’ve just signed up for engrade. Engrade automatically takes you to the page to set up your classes. The next activity will help you create an imaginary class so that you get the hang of it.

Creating a class In this activity, we are going to create a class called “Advanced Argumentation” which meets during the Spring Semester of 2010. Below you are given a sample class roster with names and student ID numbers. While setting up the course, we will also define the grading scale that we want to use and we will create assignment categories (homework, exams, etc.) with different weights.

1. If you’re not already on the “create a class” site… hover your mouse over “My Classes” and then click “Create New Class.”


2. Give your class the name “Advanced Argumentation,” select the school year (2010) from the dropdown menu, and leave the Grading Period at 1.1

3. Use the sample class roster to fill out information about your students. Enter the first name [space] last name [space] ID#. If students have more than one last name (or first name), use capitals to show two different names but DO NOT put a space between the names.

STUDENT NAME I.D. #

Austin, John 05261911

Cavell, Stanley 09011926

Descartes, Rene 03311596

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm 11141831

Heidegger, Martin 09261889

Hume, David 05071711

Kant, Immanuel 04221724

Russell, Bertrand 05181872

Spinoza, Baruch 11241632

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 04261889

1 It is possible to setup grading periods for each marking period but this process can be a bit of a hassle at first.

Until you are very comfortable using engrade, just leave the grading period at “1” and create new classes each semester when your classes change. If you happen to have the same students in your course from one semester to the next, you may wish to change the grading period to “2” at that time instead of creating an entirely new class.


4. Setup a grading scale. Next we need to set up our grading scale. There are many option that you can choose including A-B-C (10% brackets), grade is percent, manual2, or custom. For this exercise we are going to set up a custom scale. Suppose the teachers at our school decide on the following grading scheme

the lowest grade a student can get is 55

5-point increments between 55 and 90

2-point increments between 90 and 98

98, 99, and 100 require that the student actually have that percentage Using this information, we can fill out the custom scale as follows:

2 Manual is not recommended because you will have to manually compute the grades which eliminates the

convenience of having an electronic gradebook.



5. Create weighted categories for assignments. Next we will create our assignment categories so that we can weight different types of assignments. Suppose that we’ve decided to weight the categories as follows: Exams are 50%, Classwork and Homework at 15% each, and 20% is attendance and participation. Because we’re too nice, we’ll also drop the lowest exam score for each student. Tip: Later when we enter the assignments in our gradebook, we will select the assignment type from a drop-down menu with the default being the first assignment type if our list. For this reason, it’s a good idea to put the type of assignment that you collect the most as the first assignment type.


6. Make Final Adjustments Finally, we can make some fine adjustments to the way that our gradebook treats this class. We can sort both students and assignments in different ways, we can choose different methods of rounding borderline students, and we choose whether or not we want to allow the student to see their actual percentage. I recommend keeping the default values for the first two categories. Your choice for the last two is a matter of personal preference.

7. When you’re finished, click “Save Class.” If at any time you want to change the settings of your class, click on the “Settings” gear.


Adding Assignments The following activity will show you how to add assignments to engrade. Suppose the very first assignment that we have is to return the signed student contract. Let’s add this as a homework make it worth 10 points.

1. Click “New Assignment” to add a new assignment


2. Fill out information about the assignment. Give the assignment an appropriate name, select a category (in this case homework) and create a due date. Check the “Add this assignment to the calendar” box so that you can write a description of the assignment. Later we will see that checking this box also adds the assignment to a calendar where the students can view upcoming assignments.

3. Save the assignment. Once you have entered this information, scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Save.” There is no need to enter student scores at this point. We will wait until the students complete the assignment.


Entering Student Scores There are two different ways to enter student grades, you can enter them either directly from the “Gradebook” page or by re-opening the assignment and adding the scores on the assignment page.

1. From the “Gradebook” Screen (LEFT) Let’s say John, Rene, Martin, Immanual, Baruch, and Ludwig all turn in the assignment on the first day. Click on the box next to their names and type the number “10.” When finished, just use the arrow keys to move to different boxes.

2. From the “Assignment” Screen (RIGHT) If you would rather, you can open the assignment again by clicking on the name of the assignment above the column. Let’s suppose that the rest of the students handed the contract in the next class but Georg did not. Enter an “m” for Georg and this assignment will show up as “missing.” Do not leave the box blank or engrade will assume that you have not graded this assignment yet.3

3. When finished entering scores on the “Assignment” page, click the “Save Assignment” button.

3 In engrade, there is a difference between blank, m, and 0. A blank box indicates that the assignment has not yet

been entered in the gradebook. An “m” indicates that the assignment is missing. A “0” indicates that the assignment was turned in but no points were earned. If you want to excuse a student from an assignment, enter “e.”


Activity

You know the drill: it’s report card time and you have a lot of scores to enter! Below is an example of scores and assignments in a paper gradebook. Add each assignment to engrade and fill in the student scores.

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f “B

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and

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mew

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2

Ho

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ork

3

Deb

ate

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Fin

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hap

ters

of

“Bei

ng

and

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Ho

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4

Fin

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xam

Par

tici

pat

ion

Type HW class Exam HW HW class HW HW exam Part

Date 6/10 6/11 6/12 6/13 6/14 6/15 6/16 6/17 6/18 6/28

Possible Points 20 50 100 20 20 50 100 20 100 100

Austin, John 12 50 Excused 20 14 40 Excused 18 70 70

Cavell, Stanley 20 50 Excused 20 20 25 Excused 18 95 95

Descartes, Rene 17 38 Excused 20 18 30 Excused 18 80 85

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm 16 25 Excused 20 17 25 Excused 18 75 90

Heidegger, Martin 20 15 100 20 10 30 Missing 18 97 90

Hume, David 15 Miss Excused 20 10 25 Excused M 55 85

Kant, Immanuel 18 19 Excused 20 15 50 Excused 18 90 95

Russell, Bertrand 16 40 Excused 20 16 50 Excused 18 80 80

Spinoza, Baruch 13 15 Excused 20 12 50 Excused 11 70 80

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 15 50 Excused 20 10 50 Excused 18 95 85

BONUS: Do you want even more shortcuts? Suppose you have some data that has been collected in a spreadsheet. You can use the “Bulk Enter” button to paste all the student scores for an assignment at one time. (Make sure the students are in the same order in both your spreadsheet and on engrade!) If you want to try this out, open the email that I sent you and use an electronic version of the data above.

SHORTCUT: Enter 20 in the first box

and then click “Copy All.”

SHORTCUT: Enter 18 in the first box

and then click “Copy All.” Then

change the scores for David and

Baruch.


Adding additional classes using a template Let’s face it: unless you’re the principal you probably teach more than one class, and you probably have similar expectations for the different classes that you teach. This next activity will show you how to create a new class using the same settings as the class we already created.

1. Create a new class To create a new class, hover over “my classes” and click “Create New Class.”

2. Reuse class settings.

To reuse the settings from our earlier class, click on the “reuse class settings” drop-down box and select the class whose settings you would like to use.

3. Change some information. Suppse there were an epistemology class that ran the entire 2009-2010 school year but had the same settings as our Argumentation class. After selecting the class that we already created, change the new class name to “Epistemology” and set the school year to 2009-2010.

4. Scroll down and click “Save Class.”

5. Change between classes. To change between classes, hover over “My Classes” and select the class that you want to view.



Additional Features

Calendar Click on the calendar button to see a calendar view of all assignments. Students can also view the calendar when they sign in. In the calendar, you can view assignments on a calendar or as a list. You can add items to the calendars that are not assignments. For example, you might want to add the item “pizza party” but not give students a grade for this. To do this, click “new item” on the calendar tab.


Attendance Would you like to keep track of attendance and let parents and students know how many times they’ve been absent or tardy? Click on the “Attendance” tab to do this. Want to generate a cut-list quickly? Export the attendance to an excel spreadsheet where you have created some filters to show students who cut. (You need admin access to do this school-wide.)


Comments

Do you want to give the student general comments about how they’re doing in the class? Click on the “Comments” tab and let them know. These comments can be viewed when parents and students sign in.


Did you know you had a website? It’s true! Go to www.engrade.com/yourusername and see what’s there! All of your assignments have been posted and students can look at them by class.

Getting Students and parents to Sign up One of the best parts of engrade is how easy it is to give students access to their grades. Students sign up by going to www.engrade.com and signing up for a “student or parent” account.

http://www.engrade.com/yourusername

http://www.engrade.com/


In order to access their data, they will need a special code. It is very easy for you to provide these for your students. The general format of the code is engrade-yourusername-osis#. To make it even easier, you can print student access slips. Simply click on the “Students” tab and then click “Print Access Code Flyers.”

The easiest way to get students and parents to sign up is to make it an assignment on the first day of class. Another helpful tool is to create (or use) a website such as http://hsmse.awille.org/engrade that has all of the instructions for parents in one place.

http://hsmse.awille.org/engrade


Generating Reports

Student Reports If giving students and parents online communication isn’t enough, you can print out student reports. Simply select the class and click “Print Student Reports.”

Missing Work Reports Do you want to specialize the reports you print? Engrade makes it easy to print missing work resports, which only prints the work that you have marked “m.” Simply click “Print Missing Work Reports.”

Features for the Tech-Savvy

Export to Excel If you’re like me, there are a few times when you’d like to analyze the data in more depth. Or, perhaps you want to have an electronic backup of your data. The easiest way to do this is in excel. Luckily, there is a simple way to bring all of the data that you have in engrade to excel. Simply click “export to excel” to save a spreadsheet copy of your gradebook.

Bulk Enter Do you sometimes collect data in other ways? Suppose you use utexas and have all of your homework scores in a spreadsheet from their website. Simply click “Bulk enter” and you can copy and paste entire rows of data from spreadsheets into engrade.

Print Gradebook


Do you still prefer to have a physical copy of your gradebook with you at all times so that you can react instantly to students’ comments in class? If so, click “print gradebook” to print a copy of your entire gradebook.

RSS Feed for Homework Assignments You know how you can use google reader and other RSS feed readers to stay caught up with all of your favorite news sources? You know how your students use this, too? Now your homework assignments can be published news and show up in your sutdnets’ RSS feed readers. Simply instruct them to click on the orange RSS icon on your homepage (www.engrade.com/yourusername) and they can import a feed of their homework to their feed reader. In addition to having students import the feeds into their own reader, you can use the feed to create dynamic content on a website. Check out how I implemented this by going to http://hsmse.awille.org and clicking on any of the classes.

Messaging You can send private messages to your students by clicking “message” and then clicking on their name. Comments or Questions: Please send any comments or questions that you may have to [email protected].

http://www.engrade.com/yourusername

http://hsmse.awille.org/

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