Ensuring Activities Are Displayed in the Correct Grading Period

The following are common problems staff may encounter when switching from their first grading period to their second.

Changing Grading Periods

If teachers set up their course to use grading periods to separate quarters or trimesters, changing how the student’s grade from the first to the second grading period is a simple matter of setting the weight of the first grading period to “0” and then setting the weight of the second grading period to “100”. Be sure teachers do this in their base course and not their derivative so as not to cause bigger problems down the road (see #3 below)

Activity “Grading Periods” Setting

If teachers report that several of their activities are being displayed in the wrong grading period or that they suddenly “jumped” from one grading period to another, there is an easy fix. Echo doesn’t require that users define the grading period when they set up an activity. If teachers don’t select a grading period, the system looks to other nearby activities in the syllabus to determine what grading period it belongs. This works well for the first grading period, but as soon as the teacher adds an activity to the second grading period, the nearby assignments can inherit this new value and “jump” to the other grading period.

The fix is easy. Identify the activities that are in the wrong period and use the grade settings menu to pick the desired grading period. Note: Sometimes the dropdown menu is already displaying the first choice on the list making users think that the option has been selected. The user might need to change it to a different grading period, save the activity, and then go back and assign it to the correct grading period. You can also use the “bulk edit” feature to update several activities at once. Again, remind teachers to do this in the base course and not the derivatives

Differences Between Base and Derivative

As teachers begin to put activities into the new grading period, so might report that the grading categories of their derivatives aren’t matching the base. This is most commonly caused when a teacher edits the grading periods in the derivative (instead of the base) which makes it behave differently than the base. Each grading periods has its own ID# in the database. If, in the base, the teacher selects “Quarter One”, it might be associated with an ID# of “1”. But if the teacher edited the grading periods of the derivative, it’s possible that the label associated with ID# “1” is “Quarter Two”. The activity is associated with ID# 1 in both the base and derivative, but the grading period label that is displayed might not match up.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t have an easy fix and we have to repair the derivatives directly through the database. Just let the Support Team know when you see this occurring, and we’ll fix it ASAP. Please remember to include the course IDs for the base and derivative when you report the issue.

Echo is constantly being improved based on the feedback from users and we strive to keep our documentation up to date.  If this document doesn't match what you are seeing in Echo, please let us know