Fix Grade Book Printout Report (from Gradebook) to use Assignment Name (required), not Abbreviation (optional)
We discovered when launching a gradebook and running the Grade Book Printout report that the assignment headings did not populate in the report. Blackbaud confirmed that this is an issue due to a change they made for the required assignment fields. My idea request is for Blackbaud to fix this issue by either updating the Grade Book Printout report to use the Assignment Name (Title?) since that is now the required field, or to allow the choice of which field to use when running the Grade Book Printout report.
Here are the notes from the Blackbaud case:
"The report is looking for assignment abbreviations which used to be a required field, with the new assignment tool that is no longer required, so most teachers ignore it as an option. Using an abbreviation will populate that column header. I would recommend creating an idea to have this changed to assignment name instead or the option to use it at least."
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Erin Caprielian
- Oct 10 2023
- Planned
Related ideas
@Michael Morrissette Having the first 5 characters of the assignment title automatically inserted as the abbreviation if one is not entered is a step in the right direction, so thank you for that news.
However, I am concerned that moving the Abbreviation field to the "Additional settings" tab as shown in the K-12 New Academic Features Webinar preview is unfortunately just going to make it more work for teachers and ultimately keep many of them from using it since it requires an extra step to click to that tab.
If teachers don't enter an abbreviation and the first 5 characters of the title are used instead, it's not really helpful in many cases. For example, if teachers title assignments "Homework 1", "Homework 2", etc. then the reports are just going to show "Homew" as the abbreviation and will all look the same. But if teachers had quick access to the Abbreviation field on the Basic setup tab, they can quickly and easiy type in "HW1", "HW2", etc. which does differentiate the assignments in reports.
Ideally, the Abbreviation field should remain somewhere on the first "Basic setup" tab so teachers can quickly and easily use it without an extra click to a second screen. I'm hoping this will be taken into consideration as the update is being finalized (and that it has been tested by teachers who add assignments regularly). Thank you!
Hi Folks -
With the update to the assignment screen coming, we'll be updating the logic behind the scenes that handles the abbreviation field. In the event the teacher leaves the abbreviation field null, we'll automatically insert the first 5 characters of the assignment title into the assignment abbreviation field upon saving the assignment.
This update coming to the assignment experience will be coming in the 25-26 school year, so be on the lookout!
-Mike
I agree! It is an issue with the teachers Missing Assignments report as well. We are new to Blackbaud and many teachers have not been using the abbreviations since it is not a required field so the missing assignments report is useless unless teachers change to begin using abbreviations.
This is such a huge design mistake. Abbreviations used to be required, and now it's obvious why. Gradebook reports use abbreviations. We have teachers run the "Missing Assignments" report from their gradebooks for student/parent meetings and now we will have to tell everyone they MUST use abbreviations or the report is useless. The reports need to either pull the full assignment title, which is required, or abbreviations need to be required again.