UPrep's Best Practices for Schoology
UPrep's Best Practices for Schoology
Embedded Files
Organization and Prioritization
Organization and Prioritization
Folders are crucial for students being able to access the relevant and current resources in your course Please identify your folders with a meaningful title and heading. Other options include color coding certain folders. Try and envision how students will navigate the structure of your course to find what they need. A good rule of thumb is that the first page of course should contain folders, under which all of your course content resides. Common strategies include:
Folders for each unit,
Folders for certain date ranges, or
Folders for types of material (e.g., Homework, Readings, Daily Practice)
If there is a resource, link, or activity that students will need to access regularly throughout the course, consider putting it in a separate folder (such as “Toolkit” or “Common Resources”) at the top of your page.
Creating Assignments
Creating Assignments
There are many options in setting up an assignment within Schoology. While these may seem daunting at first, they are each important to make sure that both faculty and students can access the information we need reliably and efficiently. Feel free to print this page as a checklist to help you build the habits for good assignment hygiene.
Due Dates
Due Dates
Any assigned work for the class, whether it's done in Schoology or not, must be created and given a due date in Schoology. The class calendar is the most common time management and organizational tool that students use to organize their tasks, and it is crucial that we give them complete and accurate information.
Submission Method
Submission Method
By default, Schoology assumes that assignments will be submitted electronically. If you do not wish to receive this assignment through Schoology, you must turn off the "Submissions" feature while creating the assignment. Otherwise, Schoology will assume that the assignment is missing, and erroneously notify students that their work is missing. This has the unfortunate side effect of training students to ignore all missing assignment notifications, whether accurate or not.
Resources
Resources
Schoology allows you to attach links or supplemental files to an assignment. If there are files or websites which a student should use to complete an assignment, please attach them directly to the assignment so that students may easily find them. If the resource will be used beyond that assignment, for example throughout a unit or throughout the term, consider putting it in the most appropriate folder and leaving instructions on where students will find it.
Paw Ratings
Paw Ratings
In the Upper School, use the Paw Ratings chart to estimate a student's workload for this task. Indicate the Paw Rating with the number of *** in the title of the assignment. For more information, read the Paw Ratings Implementation guide.
Workload Calendar
Workload Calendar
The Workload Calendar is a separate class for each grade level, 9-12, which exists to show us the overall picture of how many assignments, assessments, etc., students are balancing at a time. Once you have created an assignment, copy it to the appropriate grade level Workload Calendar using the "Copy to Course" feature.
Grading
Grading
UPrep's prefered gradebook tool is the one integrated in Schoology which some attractive benefits for teachers and students:
The gradebook is automatically populated when you create your assignments, meaning you do not have to maintain a separate gradebook.
Your feedback to students will be linked to the assignment directly so it is easy for them to see your comments or score.
As many classes already use the gradebook, students will likely be familiar with how to navigate it and see your comments.
Students and parents frequently cite the gradebook as one of the most helpful tools in supporting students' performance in class, and in particular tracking overdue or missing work.
Please consider these guidelines:
Publish grades to students either:
In your class if useful for discussion or feedback sessions, or
Outside of school hours, so as not to pull students' attention from their other activities.
If you want to weight certain assignments by either term, or category, do this at the beginning of the course as much as possible. Changing weighting during the term may change a student's grade in a way which is surprising to them.
Familiarize yourself with the opions to show or hide overall gardes in the Grade Setup screen according to your preferences. In Middle School, please disable all overall grades (a percentage output) so as not to confuse students with an "overall percentage grade" which is in contrast to our Standards-Based Grading.
Take a few minutes in your class to orient students to where you will post feedback. You may wish to leave specific, detailed feedback on the assignment submission, fior example, or high-level summary comments in the gradebook. You may use either, both, or neither of those options, but please be consistent and communicate your intent to students.
Familiarize yourself with the "missing" and "excused" flags, as they are convenient tools to communicate necessary information to students.
To learn more about the Schoology Gradebook, please see the materials below, or e-mail June.
Page updated
Report abuse