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How do I manage Course Settings?

Stephanie Kolcun
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Echo is designed to meet the needs of a variety of course types.  Teachers can build self-paced courses, traditional teacher-centered courses, or highly differentiated PBL courses. The course settings allow the teacher to customize their course features to meet nearly every context.

NOTE: The teacher app will be visible to any user that is enrolled as a teacher in a course or any user that has "Staff" permissions granted in the domain.

To access the course settings control panels, click the wrench icon to open the Course settings menu.

Course Setting Control Panels

The main settings panel has several properties that you can customize:

  • Course Title
  • Course Thumbnail  (Ideal image size is 500x500 px.  Echo will resize as needed.)
  • Course Term
  • Course Start and End Dates
    (Note that course enrollment dates control when a course becomes visible in the Echo workspace. This setting only provides a default start and end date for new enrollments)
  • Continuous Course Option (An option for course where students can enroll and complete at their own pace.  Activity due dates are disabled in continuous courses, however activities in Continuous courses will display on students ToDo lists)
  • Agenda Option (Allows teachers to post daily information about course activities)
  • Hero Image (Allows teachers to have an image displayed in the background of their course for students. Suggested size is 2400 X 750)
    Example of a hero image is below
NOTE:  Some of the control panels below may be turned off in the domain and not visible.  The Echo Administrator can enable them if needed.

The Gradebook Options control panel allows teachers to:

  • set the minimum score required to pass the course
  • select or customize a grading scale
  • select how the current/final grade will be displayed to students (note that the "percent" option is selected by default when the Multi-Outcome scoring gradebook is enabled)

The Multi-Outcome Scoring settings panel allows the teacher to enable the multi-outcome scoring gradebook (MOS).  The MOS gradebook is essential for courses that use project based learning and other deeper learning practices.  To learn more about configuring the multi-outcome gradebook, click here.

Grading Categories settings panel allow teachers to classify assignments by defined types.  In general, grading categories are not used if the multi-outcome scoring gradebook is enabled.

NOTE: In most cases this panel will not be visible because it is turned off at the domain level. This is because multi-outcome scoring takes place of traditional grading categories

The Grading Periods settings panel allows teachers to divide courses into weighted components. For example, some districts require that the semester final grade is based on 40% first quarter, 40% second quarter, and 20% final exam. Echo Admins configure grading periods for the school at a domain level; teachers should not modify the grading periods except for the weights. For more information on grading periods, click here.

Advanced Options

Manage the following options:

  • Allow students to see comparative class statistics
  • Hide student course-completion percentage
  • Automatically assign zero scores to past-due activities (The zero is assigned when the due date passes even if students are allowed to late submissions.)
    • When enabled, a Mark auto-zeroed activities as complete checkbox that you can use to manage how auto-zeroed activity status is handled.
  • Hide teacher names in student reports (If not hidden, teacher(s) first and last names appear in various places the student Grades tool.)
  • Students must complete each activity in order (using the order in the Editor > Syllabus)

When auto-generating due dates (only applicable in continuous enrollment courses):

  • Provide less time for activities that require only viewing.
    • When unchecked, all activities are considered equally to calculate the time allowed for each and what due date to assign.
    • When checked, activities that require only viewing get less time than other activities. 
    • NOTE: To create an activity that requires only viewing from the student, disable the This activity is gradable option.
      • Technical note: If you create activities through the XLI API, activities that require only viewing are non-gradable item’s whose type is AssetLink or Resource.
  • Assign the same due date to activities within a folder

The Grade Scales settings panel allows teachers to customize the grading scale used in the course.

The Student Tasks settings panel enables an advanced feature that allows for higher degrees of personalization in the course by allowing students to have more control over how they learn.  

The Badges settings panel enables teachers to configure the course to assign a badge when the student successfully completes a course.  For more on Echo's badges feature, click here.

The Enrollment Completion settings panel allows teacher to determine when a student's enrollment in a course will change from "active" to "completed".

  • Manual completion.
  • Automatic when all activities are complete; this option asks you to check or uncheck the Require course passing score and Require retries to be completed boxes. When Echo automatically marks a course as complete, the final score is calculated and reported in Final Grades.
  • Automatic when all gradable activities are complete; this option asks you to check or uncheck the Require course passing score and Require retries to be completed boxes. When Echo automatically marks a course as complete, the final score is calculated and reported in Final Grades.
  • Automatic when all activities in these categories are complete; this option asks you to check or uncheck the Require course passing score and Require retries to be completed boxes, and choose the desired category(s) from the dropdown. When Echo automatically marks a course as complete, the final score is calculated and reported in Final Grades.

The Variables settings panel is an advanced feature that allows teachers to create custom fields that can be used to further classify or organize course activities.  Course authors can give the variable a name and define the possible values for the field.  This feature is seldom used by classroom teachers.

In continuous courses, Echo will suggest due dates based on the number of assignments and the enrollment start and end dates.  The Blackout Dates settings panel allows teacher to identify dates that the system will avoid for suggested due dates (i.e. holidays).

The Publisher Options settings panel allow content providers to control their curriculum.  These options are seldom used by classroom teachers.

Publisher options

Publisher options are meant to help manage Base and Derivative courses and your full curriculum. Indicate whether you want to:

  • Prevent content edits in derivative courses
  • Show indicator for edited content in derivative courses
  • Include course in subscriber search index

 

 

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.

 

 

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