I am currently out of the office, returning July 9th. I will have limited access to my email. However, if you need a transcript, email me the name and address of the school or organization and it will be handled as soon as possible.

I'm so excited you guys are working on this idea! Thank you Jackie and team! You all rock!

After watching the video, I am generally happy with everything I saw, but here are some of my thoughts and suggestions:

1. I agree with Nancy's (point #4). We had the same issue and this caused a major coup in my elementary school. We do not want to release the rosters to our teachers until they are finalized, and the fact that they could still see the names in the grade book even with the group page access turned off was a big issue. I am not sure if this is part of the scope of your overhaul, but I would like to see it if possible.

2. I LOVE the default gradebook options section. For us, we mandate the decimal precision by school level, so this would work perfectly. I also like that I can lock the grade books in "By marking period." I love the feature for being able to show grades and not averages. For the gradebook calculation section, It would be great if that could be defined per course or course department as well. For us, each department head selects their method of calculation, then everybody in the department uses the same method. If we could define that by department that would be great for us.

3. I didn't see this mentioned in the video, but if you could also make it so that teachers did not see other assignments types in their list other than the ones they selected in the gradebook setup, you would be my best friend. This is by far the most common cause of grade issues. You could fix this a couple different ways, but ideally, a teacher would set up their grade book and select the assignment types they would be using, then those would be the only selections available when adding a new assignment. If that is too difficult, then could we get a prompt/alert for the teacher when they select an assignment type that they have not used previously or do not have a weight set up for?

4.  One other thing that could be included in this overhaul would be a more forgiving method of copying gradebook setup from one class to another. Currently, if a teacher open the grade book setup of a class, then saves it, that class is no longer eligible to have settings copied to it en mass. Teacher get ONE shot at a mass copy. It would be so wonderful if there was a way that would allow the mass copy of gradebook marking period setup at any time, as long as there were not assignments currently posted for the new marking period. That would be a huge help to many of our teachers.

Sorry this is so verbose. Please let me know if you want clarification on any of this.

One more thought regarding the Assignment Settings Page.  Under Assignment Types, can these be set up by school level instead of for the entire school? 

Hi Jackie!  We are looking forward to these changes!  

Here are a few thoughts-

1) We do not show final/yearly grades.  We only show quarter and semester grades. We would love the ability to  uncheck the edit gradebook setting  "allow users to view year cumulative" administratively.  If some teachers choose to set up their gradebooks by year, they usually forget to this check box on each and every section they teach.  

2) Regarding number of decimal points to show, we find our departments differ on what they would choose.  The math department always wants to show more decimal places, while the history department wants to round up, for example.  

3) I noticed something in your video called "All School Advisors". Is this coming in a future release? We had add school advisors (by school level) in Education Edge and would love to have them back again!

4) With regards to students showing up in the gradebooks: Group page access allows us to turn off access to rosters for teachers in a class while we are still finalizing class lists early in the summer.  It does not, however, turn off visibility of student lists in the gradebook.  Last summer we had a teacher reach out to students in their class while we were still tweaking the class lists, not realizing they weren't finalized.  He assumed that if they were in his gradebook, they were all set.  Is there a way for us to globally hide the students in the gradebook?  This way teachers can set up their gradebooks and add assignments over the summer, without seeing the class listed along the left side?  

Thanks again!

<sigh> 

Here's the video WITH audio: https://www.screencast.com/t/8x4xuhZx 

Thanks!
Jackie

The initial prototype looks solid. May be just me, but I didn't hear any commentary on the video (if it was supposed to be included).