How do I manage Course Settings?

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 course editor icon located on the course card.

In the top tool bar click the tools icon and select course settings.

There are several course settings you can customize:

• Course Title
• School Year
• Course Thumbnail  (Ideal image size is 500x500 px.  Echo will resize as needed.)
• 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)
• 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
• Course Color

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.

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. You can also divide them into semesters or quarters. Echo Admins configure grading periods for the school at a domain level; teachers should not modify the grading periods. For more information on grading periods, click here.

The Objective Mastery option has 3 options:

1. The objective mastery threshold is the percentage of points a student has to earn on an objective-aligned activity to show mastery of that objective. If an objective is aligned with multiple activities, Echo uses the weighted average. By default, the objective mastery threshold is set at 70%. Click here to learn more about objective.
2. Formative assessment, click here to learn more about formative assessments.
3. Remediation assessment, click here to learn more about remediation assessments.

The Advanced options settings panel has four options:

1. Allow students to see how they are doing compared to class statistics
2. Hide student course-completion percentage
3. Automatically assign zero scores to past-due activities
   1. If enabled, and the activity’s due date either gets removed or extended to the future, Echo will now automatically remove the zero that was previously automatically assigned.
   2. Teacher will be able to also clear a student's automatically assigned zero without Echo automatically assigning the zero again, regardless of the due date.
4. Hide teacher names in student reports

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

The Course links settings panel allows students quick access to links that are used regularly in a course. Adding links to this section, allows the links to show for students at all times when in this course. (see example below)

The Student Tasks settings panel enables an advanced feature that allows for higher degrees of personalization in the course by allowing students to create and/or submit their own tasks.  

The Badges and Completion Badges panels enable teachers to configure the course to assign a badge when the student successfully completes an activity, a unit, or the entire course. For more on Echo's badges feature, click here.