When using the LMS it is important to carefully consider the different assessment settings and configurations as these will impact on how the LMS is used by staff, students and parents. There are a number of ways to configure how the LMS is used including configuring Grade Groups, Academic Periods, Work Types, Submission States and Rubric settings.
Assessment Settings
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1. Navigate to Administration > LMS > Grades to create one or more grade groups for teachers to choose from when they are creating a Due Work and select the 'Letter Grade' option in the 'Mark Type' field.
Tips For Setting Up a Grade Group
- Any text can be entered in the Caption field. The text entered becomes the assigned grade when using the Grade Group for a Due Work and on the student’s Grades Page (if it is part of the default grade group).
- The Normalised Grade can be any number between the Lower Bounds. This is the number that will be recorded as the student’s grade if the teacher uses letter grades on a Due Work rather than a whole number.
- The lower bound and normalised grade are configurable to 2 decimal places.
2. Navigate to Administration > LMS > LMS policy.
3. Select 'Default Grade Group' to choose the grade group that will be available at the top of the list when a teacher selects 'Letter Grade' when creating a Due Work item.
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In Schoolbox, the academic period determines the period of time for accumulating feedback on a student’s learning for a particular class. For example, some schools will give students a final grade at the end of each semester, while others may only give a grade at the end of the academic year. It also becomes the selection option for accessing archived Classes from My Classes or grades from the Grades page.
1. Navigate to Administration > LMS > Academic Period.
2. Select 'Add Academic Period'.
3. Complete the Academic Period Details. Include the following details:
- A Title for the academic period that your users will recognise.
NOTE: A title can contain minimum of 1 and a maximum of 48 characters. - A ‘Code’ which can act as a shortened identifier. The code needs to be unique for the semester. For example, the code for Semester 1 of 2020 could be 2020-1.
NOTE: A code can contain a maximum of 6 characters. - The Start Date.
- The Finish Date.
NOTE: There should not be a gap between start and finish dates for successive academic periods. If a gap has been left, feedback may not be assigned to the correct academic period.
4. Optionally, you can select Year Levels that will allow you to follow an alternative academic period's dates.
By selecting a year level, homepages that have been associated to this year level will no longer follow the academic period set for your instance. This allows you to have multiple academic periods set for different areas of the school.
5. Select 'Create Academic Period'.
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When an academic period is archived, staff can no longer add feedback for any assessment item that is due within the academic period. However, Superusers can add feedback to an archived academic period.
1. Navigate to Administration > LMS > Academic Period.
2. Select the 3-dot menu next to the academic period you wish to archive, then select 'Archive'.
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Modify Academic Periods
1. Navigate to Administration > LMS > Academic Period.
2. Select the arrow icon next to the academic period you wish to update.
3. From this screen, you can modify any of the parameters for the academic period.
Restoring an Archived Academic Period
1. Navigate to Administration > LMS > Academic Period.
2. Select the 3-dot menu next to the academic period you wish to restore, then select 'Restore'.
Deleting an Academic Period
If an academic period is deleted, then it can no longer act as a parameter for organising feedback and classes. If this occurs, then the previous available Assessment Period will continue to operate, even if it is archived and even if the current date is past the finish date of the previously set Assessment Period. This is designed to ensure feedback is not lost if an academic period is inadvertently not set.
1. Navigate to Administration > LMS > Academic Period.
2. Select the 3-dot menu next to the academic period you wish to delete, then select 'Delete'.
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1. Navigate to Administration > Lists > Work Types.
Create the required 'Work Types'. Each new Due Work can be assigned to one of the Work Types created. The labelling of a Due Work can be used to filter the Markbook, Course Markbook, or Grades pages. This ensures users can distinguish between different types of Due Work, for instance formative or summative assessments.
2. Select if each Work Type will be visible on the Student Grades Page.
3. Select if the Work Type will be visible to Staff only.
4. Add an External SIS Type if available and required.
5. To alter the order that the Work Types will appear when creating due work, use the grab handle.
6. To delete a Work Type, select the 3-dot menu and then select 'Delete Row'.
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1. Navigate to Administration > Lists > Submission States
There must be a normalised grade stored in the Schoolbox database when a submission is created. Once a teacher has marked the submission, the normalised grade will be stored either as the number given (if teacher uses whole number as the mark type) or as the normalised grade for that grade scale (if the teacher uses letter grades as the mark type).
Until the teacher assigns a number - or if the teacher has selected a mark type without a number - the values in the Normalised Grade field for the current Submission State will be recorded in the Schoolbox database.
Using the Null field, will ensure the normalised grade that is stored does not affect the grade average of the student. This ensures any submissions that have not been given a grade by a teacher does not affect the grade average.
Some schools may choose to add a number to the Normalised Grade field in order to effect the student's grade average. For example, entering 0 in the Normalised Grade field for Absent will mean the student would be assigned a 0 for that particular assessment, which will lower their grade average for that class.
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1. Navigate to Administration > LMS > LMS Policy.
2. Navigate to 'Show Points on Rubrics'. If toggled to 'ON', students are able to see the points assigned to a rubric descriptor.
3. Navigate to 'Maximum Number of Rubric Levels'. This number determines the maximum number of levels that can be created on a rubric.
4. Navigate to LMS > Rubric Results Set.
From this screen, a Superuser can create the rubric results sets. These are the 'level descriptors' for rubrics that will be created in a Due Work. Teachers can select from these sets when they create a Due Work with a rubric. It is important to note that these sets can be individually manipulated by teachers in each due work, so they are a template only.