Gradebook

Every assignment in HomeSchool Minder is available within the Gradebook module. Navigate to this module by selecting the second tab in the main menu.

Assignments are organized by courses which are shown depending on which student and year you have selected. The Gradebook is where you're able to maintain, grade, and copy assignments.

Maintaining Assignments

Assignments may be added, edited, and deleted through the gradebook. To add an assignment, look for the green add button in the top right of the assignment's table. You will notice this same pattern to add records elsewhere in the application.

Maintaining an assignment may be done in two ways. First, you may click on a field in the table to edit it directly.

With the row selected, you may also edit an assignment by clicking on the edit button which appears in the top bar. This will display the original detail screen you used when adding an assignment. Use this option when you need to change more specific assignment information such as its description.

Likewise, the delete button will also appear when you have selected an assignment. Click this button to permanently remove it from your gradebook.

Grading

Assignments may be graded quickly and easily through the gradebook. Every assignment will display its possible points, score, and grade. The points possible is the total number of points an assignment is worth relative to all other assignments in that category for a course. To score an assignment, click in the score column for that record, type in the number of points which have been scored, and press Enter.

You may also grade an assignment by using one of your predefined scoring symbols. You may do this by selecting the dropdown arrow in the score entry.

Once the score has been entered, the gradebook will automatically update with the corresponding letter grade for the assignment based on the percentage calculated by dividing the scored points by the points possible. These letter grades are determined from the Scales and Symbols settings and the Grade Scale you selected for the assignment.

Filtering

The assignments table may be sorted and filtered to display a subset of assignments for a selected course. Click any column header to adjust the sorting of assignments based on that value. To filter a column, select the dropdown arrow on the column's header and use the filter option to pick a value. You may filter on the Name, Term, and Category columns.

Grade Summaries

As you update the gradebook, HomeSchool Minder will automatically calculate term and year summaries in the right column. The term summary contains the current term's letter grade as well as a breakdown of the grade by assignment category. The year summary shows the overall course grade for that year.

Notice that the weights are displayed by each assignment category in each term summary. These give you an idea of how the final grade is calculated. If an assignment category will not be used for a course, you can set its weight to 0 in the Weighting settings and it won't show up here.

Term Overrides

Term grades are calculated based on the scores you give each assignment in your gradebook. If you haven't entered any assignments but still want a term to be graded or if you simply want to change the term's grade without changing individual assignment scores, you can easily override the grade by clicking on the term's letter grade in the summary.

This will open the term override dialog where you can enter a new percentage score. As you do so, the old grade will be grayed out and the new corresponding letter grade will be highlighted.

To remove this override, simply open the term override dialog again and erase this new score.

Copying Assignments

To copy assignments to a different student or course, select the Copy button in the top right of the gradebook screen. This will display the Copy Assignments dialog with the assignments for the current student and the first term of the currently selected course.

You can pick the student, course, and term to copy assignments from and to by using the dropdowns in the top bar.

Here we have chosen to copy assignments from Joshua Keith's Adv. Literature Fall Term to Joshua Keith's Adv. Literature Spring Term. When you select a target to copy assignments to, you will see any existing assignments for that student, course, and term combination. Click on the assignment in the left column you wish to copy and it will show up on the right along with a message stating how many assignments will be copied.

At the bottom of the window, you will see two additional options. "Select visible Assignments" will select all assignments in the left pane for copying. "Overwrite Assignments with the same name" will remove any assignments from the target student's course/term before copying the new one. Please be careful if you've given several assignments the same name as this may potentially make unwanted deletions.

When you're ready to copy the selected assignments, click the Next button in the bottom right of the dialog. Next, we'll show you a confirmation dialog to ensure you're copying (and possibly deleting) the assignments in which you intend.

Notice the dates have been changed in the process of copying. HomeSchool Minder will automatically redate copied assignments relative to their source term. For example, if an assignment was given on the fourth Tuesday of the Fall term, we will date the new copy on the fourth Tuesday of the target term.

Gradebook Docs