Course Details

once you've created and added courses, you can click on any course name to open it and access a variety of customization options in addition to the pre defined settings in course templates, you'll find configurable options across several tabs each tab contains menu sections that you can click on or scroll through instructions at the top of each section provide helpful guidance for configuration this section of the guide will walk you through all the available options in the course details tab details in the details section of the course, certain fields like the location, academic session, and course code are fixed from the initial course setup you can then customize additional details, such as the course name, description, hours, credits, capacity, passing mark, attendance thresholds, publish the course so students can view it on the student portal and more note make sure the passing mark is set above 0% if it’s left at 0%, any grade will be treated as a passing mark status in the status section, you can mark the course as 'complete' when it's finished this action finalizes the course, updates student marks, grants credits, and ensures the course appears on the student’s transcript additionally, under the more actions tab, you can 'lock' the course this option is useful for roles like the registrar when auditing the course, as it prevents any changes while reviewing and finalizing course details before completion instructors in the instructors section, you can add new instructors to a course when adding an instructor, you’ll need to specify the level of access you want to grant them the new instructor pop up includes an explanation of each access level and what it allows the instructor to do you can add multiple instructors, each with different access levels as needed schedule in the schedule section of the course details, you can set up a weekly schedule by adding dates, times, attendance hours, and resources for the course you can also input identifiers, which are unique labels or tags used to track or categorize different aspects of the course, such as session numbers or department codes, often used for reporting once the schedule is created, you can generate schedules for students and staff additionally, the schedule can serve as a template for adding attendance events for the course note in order to use the schedule for taking attendance, you must first add it to attendance events (discussed below) the schedule itself simply creates a timetable for the course within the academic session adding resources for course scheduling you can customize resources for your courses by going to institution config / resources / add new resource resources can include things like materials, equipment, or facilities needed for your courses customizing and adding resources helps ensure that all necessary items are properly tracked and assigned to the right courses, streamlining your course management process fees when creating or editing a course, you can manage fees in the fees section fees set here will be applied to enrolled students based on their fee class you can create different fee classes for domestic and international students, and the correct fee class will be assigned automatically based on whether a student is marked as an international student in their profile to add a fee, click new course fee , then select the fee class, revenue account, description, amount, and select any applicable taxes you can add multiple fee items within each fee class, with default accounts available for tuition, registration fees, materials, and other, ensuring all course related fees are properly structured prerequisites you can set prerequisites for your courses to prevent students from enrolling if they have not completed the required prerequisite course to add a prerequisite, click new prerequisite , then select a course from the list of course templates —only courses listed as templates will be available additionally, enforce prerequisites must be enabled in institution account / courses / defaults for prerequisites to be enforced during enrollment grading schema the grading schema in ampeducator allows you to define how different components of a course contribute to a student’s final grade when entering the grading schema, you will encounter 5 grade link types assignment , attendance , evaluation , test , and external lti tool each type corresponds to different fields that you'll need to fill out the specific fields that appear will depend on the grade link type you choose for more detailed information on setting up and using these link types, refer to the lms section of the guide each grade type can be assigned a specific weight, and you can configure them based on your grading requirements the schema can be customized to match your institution’s grading policies, ensuring that each grade component is accurately reflected in the final course grade once set up, the grading schema will automatically calculate and assign grades based on the criteria you've defined note be sure that the total of all the grade components adds up to 100% to ensure accurate grade calculations grade groups grade groups in ampeducator allow instructors to organize their grade items into categories, making it easier to manage and track student performance this feature is especially useful for courses that have multiple types of assessments, such as tests, assignments, and evaluations grade groups help you organize these items into logical categories, set weighted values, and track the overall performance of students within each group to create a grade group, go to course / grading schema / more actions / new course grade group here, you can add a name for each group (e g , assignments) and assign a weight that reflects its value in the overall course grade once a grade group is created, you can add individual grade items (e g , specific tests or assignments) to the group each grade item can be given a weight that contributes to the total group weight the weight of all grade items within a group must total the group’s overall weight, ensuring the total percentages align absolute weight the percentage of the total course grade that the item contributes relative weight the percentage of the group’s total weight you also have the option to configure the take best feature within a group this feature allows you to specify that only the best scores (e g , top 4 out of 5) will be counted towards the final grade for that group once set up, grade groups are displayed in the gradebook , showing both individual grades and group totals video walkthrough course grade groups grading scale in the grading scale section, configure the relationship between letter grades, percentages, and grade point averages (gpa) for the course you can disable any letter grade you don’t use for the course each letter grade represents a range between the mark assigned and the letter above it for example, if a = 85% (3 7 gpa) and a+ = 90% (4 0 gpa), any mark between 85 89% would be assigned an a (3 7 gpa) once updated, recalculate the course totals to apply the changes to existing student grades you can further customize the grade range and how grades are rounded in the next section, 'custom grading scales ' custom grading scales in the 'custom scales' section, you can create your own grading scales you have the flexibility to choose whether you want grades to round to the closest value, round up, or round down average grade distribution the average grade distribution provides a visual representation of how students' grades are spread across different ranges in your course this chart helps you quickly assess the overall performance of your class by showing the percentage of students falling into each grade bracket it includes key metrics like the average grade, median, and standard deviation, offering valuable insights into the overall performance, variability, and trends within the course this can help you identify areas where students may need additional support or where the class is excelling attendance events the attendance events section allows you to manage and track attendance for your course if you’ve already set up a course schedule, you can easily add the attendance events by using the more actions menu if you haven’t set up a schedule or need to manually input attendance events, simply click the new events button to add them this section is crucial for recording student attendance, as events must be created in order to take attendance for the course