Manage Assignments

Settings > Manage Assignments

This page allows you to add assignments for your active courses, including extra credit assignments. You can also copy the assignments to other courses.

Categories must be established for the course on Settings > Manage Categories before you can add assignments.

Different fields are displayed according to the type of course selected (category-based (i.e., regular) courses and standards-based courses).

You cannot make changes to assignments once the cycle is closed.

Update data:

❏ Specify the course-section:

Semester	The current semester is displayed by default. You can select another semester.
Cycle	The current cycle is displayed by default. You can select another cycle.
Course-Section	Select the course-section you want to add assignments for. The drop down lists the two-digit period and course name. The course number and section number are in parentheses. NOTE: For courses that are part of a course group, any changes to an assignment will apply to all courses in the group. An assignment can only be modified or deleted if no grades exist for the assignment for any course in the group.

❏ Click Retrieve.

Assignments that have previously been entered for the semester-cycle-course-section are listed. Otherwise, the message “No Assignment Exists” is displayed.

❏ Click Add new assignment to add a new assignment.

A blank row is added to the grid.

Assignment Name

Type a name for the assignment (e.g., Pop Quiz 1), up to 50 characters, that is unique no matter what the category is per semester/cycle. Assignment names can be changed at any time, as needed.

TIP: It is helpful to keep the assignment name as brief as possible; however, the name should be descriptive enough to distinguish it from other assignments. Longer assignment names require more space on the Assignment Grades page, which may result in a more cumbersome page.

See notes on Special Characters and Copy/Paste From Other Documents.

NOTE: Assignment Names cannot contain a pipe character ( | ).

Category

Select a category for the assignment. These categories are established on Settings > Manage Categories.

If a color has been assigned to the category on the Manage Categories page, the drop-down list displays the assigned color for the category.

This field is not displayed for standards-based courses; the Edit Standards column is displayed instead.

Edit Standards/Skills

For standards-based courses, the number of standards currently associated for the assignment is displayed.

This field is only displayed for standards-based courses.

# Standards

❏ Click the link.

The Editing Standards for Assignment: Assignment Name window opens.

An assignment cannot be saved unless it has at least one standard associated with it.

Available Standards	All available standard-sets and associated standards are listed. Select the standards you want to associate with the assignment. To select multiple consecutive standards, click the first standard, then press and hold SHIFT while clicking the last standard in the range. To select multiple nonconsecutive standards, click a standard, then press and hold CTRL while clicking the other standards.

❏ Click Add» to associate the selected standard(s) with the assignment.

Selected Standards	The selected standards are listed under the appropriate standard set name.

❏ To remove a standard from an assignment, select the standard under Selected Standards, and then click «Del.

The standard is moved back to the Available Standards list.

NOTE: You cannot delete a standard if there are any assignment grades for the standard.

❏ Click OK to close the window.

The Edit Standards field is updated to reflect the number of standards associated with the assignment.

Date Assigned

Type the assignment date in the MMDDYYYY format, or click to select a date from the calendar.

NOTE: This field is critical for running the Graded Assignment Count admin report. If this field is blank for an assignment, and a date range is selected when running the report, the assignment is not included in the report.

Date Due

Type the assignment date in the MMDDYYYY format, or click to select a date from the calendar.

NOTE: You can also set a default value for this field using the in the Default Assignment Due Date field on Settings > Update Profile. Valid options are no default date, the current date, or up to five days in the future. You can override the default date as needed.

Total Points

Type the total number of possible points for the assignment. Do not type zero unless it is an extra credit assignment. The field is set to 100 by default.

This field is not displayed for standards-based courses.

NOTE: If you have assigned a rubric chart to this assignment, this field displays the total possible points for the rubric chart and cannot be updated.

If you are using percentage-based weighting, and if the field is not set to 100, the warning icon is displayed next to the field. When you click , a warning message opens indicating that you should review the Help for Calculating Averages (Calculate Averages guide) to understand how the grades are calculated in this situation. This warning is also displayed when you click Save if the points are not set to 100.

Select Do not show this message again if you do not want to receive this reminder every time you click Save.

WARNING: If all assignments in a category do not have the same total points value, then the calculations for dropping a specified number of assignments for the category (as indicated in the # Drop field on Settings > Manage Categories) may result in an average that is different than expected. If the total points value varies, the grade with the lowest number of points may not necessarily be the lowest grade.

Extra Credit

Select if the assignment is for extra credit.

NOTE: If the assignment is for extra credit, the Total Points is set to zero and cannot be changed.

Extra credit assignments add points to the average for the category selected. If a student has no grade or a zero for the extra credit assignment, it does not count against him when his average is calculated.

See the Extra Credit section of the Calculate Averages guide for an explanation of calculating averages with extra credit for each weighting type.

This field is not available for standards-based courses or assignments that have a rubric chart assigned.

Do Not Drop

Select if you do not want to drop that particular assignment. This field relates to the # Drop field on Settings > Manage Categories.

If Do Not Drop is selected, the assignment grade is not dropped, even if it is the student's lowest grade, and you have specified to drop one or more of the lowest grades in a particular category.

This field does not apply to standards-based courses.

Rubric

You can assign an existing rubric chart to the assignment, which allows you to grade the assignment using a rubric chart. The rubric charts are created on Settings > Rubric Setup.

• If a rubric chart is not currently associated with the assignment, the icon (three black squares) is displayed.

• If a rubric chart is currently associated with the assignment, the icon (four multicolored squares) is displayed.

❏ Click the icon to associate a rubric chart with the assignment or to change the associated rubric chart.

The rubric chart window opens.

Under Available Rubrics, any rubric charts you have created that have at least one skill and one score are listed.

Available Rubrics	Click for the rubric chart you want to use. If the rubric is selected, the box becomes yellow . You can only change the rubric chart assigned to an assignment if no grades exist for the rubric chart.

❏ Click Assign Selected Rubric.

The window closes.

IMPORTANT: The Total Points field for the assignment changes to display the maximum possible points for the rubric chart (maximum possible points x skill count) and is read-only.

Notes

❏ Click to add or update optional notes for the assignment.

If entered, these notes are viewable in ParentPortal.

The notes above on special characters for the Assignment Name field also apply to this field.

❏ Add or update the note in the Note window and click OK.

The Note window closes, and the note icon is yellow to indicate that a note was entered.

❏ Or, to clear an existing note for the assignment, click Clear.

The Note window closes, and the note icon is gray to indicate that no notes exist.

Click to delete an assignment.

NOTE: You cannot delete an assignment if grades have been posted for the assignment.

If you delete grades on the Assignment Grades page in order to delete an assignment, you must be sure to delete the grade for any withdrawn students too.

Save assignments:

PIN	Type your four-digit personal identification number (PIN).

❏ Click Save.

Copy assignments to another course-section:

Once you have saved assignments for a course, you can copy the assignments to another course-section.

❏ Use the Semester, Cycle, and Course-Section fields to select the course-section from which to copy assignments.

❏ Click Copy Assignments to Another Course-Section-Cycle.

The Copy Assignments page opens.