In this article, we will discuss how to set up the Subject-Specific Criteria and ways to enter student’s grades in the report cards.
- Enabling The Setup Subject-Specific Criteria Tab
- Creating a New Subject Template
- Viewing and Editing Templates
- Assigning Templates
Enabling The Setup Subject -Specific Criteria Tab
If you need to display grading criteria that is subject-specific, you can set this up so that only students enrolled in particular subjects display that criteria on their report cards. First, make sure that the Setup Subject-Specific Criteria tab is enabled and appears on your Report Card module. At the very bottom of the Setup Report Cards tab is a message asking whether you need to configure subject-specific criteria for your report cards. To enable this, you must toggle the Setup Subject-Specific Criteria tab on by clicking on the link “Turn It On”.
This will add a fourth tab to the Report Cards module.
To begin setting up subject-specific criteria and customize your report card templates, choose a template that supports this. You can select the template by going to Setup Report Cards tab > Change template > a new page will open with the collection of public templates available.
Browse through the template list. You’d want to pick a template that contains Subject-Specific Criteria words and the type of report card that you need (single-term or multi-term grading). Click Select to your desired template. In this article, we’ll use the Hot Safari template.
To setup the criteria, click on the Setup Subject-Specific Criteria tab at the top of the screen.
From this page, you can create subject-specific grading criteria which should be assigned to subjects to appear in the report cards. Available subject templates will be listed under the first blue header Template Name. Note that the first time you enter this page, that list will be empty, as shown above.
Creating a New Subject Template
To create a subject template, first click on the green Add Subject Template button at the top of the screen.
This will bring up an Add Subject Template popup box that looks like this:
Enter the template name. You can leave the Alternative Subject Section Name blank. In some cases, this is used in custom report card templates to arrange sorting of subjects in the report cards.
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There are several ways to add criteria:
Additional features:
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Add Field
For this example, we’ve added a criteria for the Art subject. Clicking on Add Field results in the addition of a Subject-Specific row in the template box. Click on the text to rename this field to your desired criteria, for example, “Drawing”.
Added fields may be modified to appear in different order, or deleted, by utilizing the command buttons, which appear on the left when you place your cursor over the line. To order subject-specific criteria or move it down the list, select "V". To delete a line entirely, select "X".
Once you have added and named the fields you wish to have in your Subject Template, click the OK button to save the template. Proceed to Assigning Templates to Subjects for the next step.
To grade a text field criteria, open a student’s report card and type in the grade by clicking on the text field with dash.
Add Drop Down
Clicking on Add Drop Down results in the addition of a Subject-Specific row in the template box then rename as desired, for example, “Painting”.
Now select categories to appear in the drop-down menu associated with that field by first clicking on the column directly following the added category (in this case Painting). This will cause the following popup box to be displayed:
To add the drop down options, click the text box directly following the added criteria. This will cause the following popup box to be displayed:
You can then select from the existing menu choices (here A,B,C,D,F or Excellent, Fair, Poor or EE,S,NI,U).
The letter options in this box may be replaced with any grading options you wish to associate with this category. If you want to modify an existing set of drop-down menu options, you may do this by first selecting that option set from the main popup box, and then clicking on the Edit link shown at the right side of the box:
This allows you to edit the existing options by changing, adding, or deleting options. In the example below, we have modified the set of options Excellent, Fair, Poor to include a fourth category "Good," making the new set of options Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor.
These options will now appear in the main Edit Subject Template box, and can be saved by clicking on the Ok button.
To grade a student from the report card page, simply click the criteria text field and select from the dropdown options.
You can also grade via the Subject-based tab:
Subject-based screen using regular Dropdown
Add Easy Selector
The procedure in adding the Easy Selector is the same as adding dropdown options, the only difference is that Easy Selector criteria can ONLY be graded via the Subject-based tab. As the name suggests, you can easily select from the dropdown list by typing onto the text field, which functions like a search box. It shortens the list based on the text you just typed in - useful if you have a lot of options on the dropdown list.
Subject-based screen using Easy Selector
Add Likert Scale
Same as the other types of criteria, clicking the Add Likert button results in the addition of Subject-Specific criteria row under the 2 column table with “Criteria” header.
To set up the Likert scale, click on the 2nd box of the header in the Criteria row. This will open a popup same as adding options for dropdown as stated above. You can then select from the existing menu choices or add new options to the drop-down menu.
The subject with Likert Criteria will look like this on the actual Report Card:
Clicking the box under the likert header will automaticaly add an X mark indicating the student’s grade.
NOTE: When grading students using the Subject-based screen, the likert options are converted to a dropdown menu.
Add Header
The header is useful when you want your criteria to have multiple sections in one subject.
For example, in the English subject, you have different criteria set for Reading and another for Writing.
Add Comment
Depending on the template in use, clicking on Add Comment results in the addition of a comment row in the template box, which in this case appears at the very bottom and will contain text that appears on all students’ report cards.
Clicking on the comment box enables you to replace the text with a message you wish to appear on report cards using this template, as shown here:
Viewing and Editing Templates
Added templates will appear listed at the top of the Setup Subject-Specific Criteria page in a table under the heading "Template Name". They can be listed in reverse order by clicking on the triangle at the far upper right of the blue table border, or searched using the Search function box just above the table.
To view and edit a template, just click anywhere on the row corresponding to that subject template, and an Edit Subject Template popup box will be displayed.
You can make modifications to any aspect of the grading criteria for this subject using the four types of criteria as described above. Changes to the template may also be made using the arrows (V) to move up or down and (X) mark to delete. When finished editing, don't forget to click on the OK button to save your changes.
Assigning Templates to Subjects
When you have set up the subject templates you need for subject-specific criteria, the next step is to assign them to the courses. This is easy to do from the main Setup Subject-Specific Criteria page; simply scroll down to the section on the lower half of the page titled Assign Templates to Subjects and you will find a comprehensive list of subjects offered in the active semester.
Locate the course to which you want a subject template assigned by either using the Search function or by scrolling down through the subjects listed. Then place your cursor on the desired row under Assigned Template column and click to activate the drop-down menu of available subject templates from the list in the Template Name section on the upper half of the page, as shown here:
Select the template you wish to associate with the subject and click on it to assign it. The template will now be displayed in the Assigned Template column and its subject-specific criteria will appear on the related report card for the course. You can also mass assign templates to multiple subjects.
Access to Report Card grading is discussed further on the Subject-Based Grading section in the Report Cards Guide. For missing subject templates, see Troubleshooting Missing Subject Specific Criteria Templates.
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