Portal (LMS)

Our portal system is at the heart of our school's data

Gilmour Academy uses a Learning Management System (LMS) called onCampus by Blackbaud. As it is a hub to all of our class pages and other resource pages, we call it a portal.

For how-to videos on taking attendance, accessing your class rosters, importing content from last year's portal pages, setting up your gradebook, adding assignments, please visit the Faculty/Staff Resources board on the portal.

Attendance

We'll review this in person and you should check in with the main office to familiarize yourself with the recording process.

View how-to video on the Faculty/Staff resources board of the portal

Conduct Infractions

Our Dean of Students can't help unless you start the conversation. Speak with the Dean for best practices on what details to include when noting a concern or issue.

Class Page

A class page with a lot of content provides a sense of presence to your students.

Your class page is the digital welcoming mat to your classroom. This is also referred to as the "Bulletin Board."

You can use the trash icon to remove these card-like items from your class page. You can always add them back in by dragging them into the grid from the left sidebar. Many items will have additional options to organize links or files that you have posted.

Import from previous year

This is not importing assignments. That section is below. Here we'll look at importing bulletin board items from previous semesters or years.

In a later section, we explore how to add instructional content to our class pages:

pageClass Toolkit

Setup Gradebook

If you’ve set up the grade book for the entire year, you may also define the default point value for assignments added to each assignment type. For example, if you give daily homework that is always worth 10 points you can enter “10” in Default Max Points field. These point values can be changed, but it will save you time when adding new assignments. You will not see this option if you choose to set up the grade book by marking period.

Students can't see their average in your class until you setup the gradebook. They can see grades on individual assignments but not their class average.

Percentage

In this calculation method, each assignment must be worth 100 points. The assignments are averaged together within each assignment category, and the average is used to calculate the cumulative score based on the weights. For Example:

Homework: 30%
Quizzes: 40%
Exams: 20%
Participation: 10%

Within each of those categories, assignments have equal weight.

Formula: sum(assignment_grade/maximum_points * factor) / sum(factor) = assignment_type_grade

then:

sum(assessment_type_grade * weight) / sum(weight) * 100

Total Points

This is how I roll. In this calculation method, a student’s cumulative score is based on the total points earned divided by the total points attempted. The software does not look at assignment types when calculating the cumulative score.

Formula:

sum(assignment_grade * factor) / sum(maximum_points * factor)

Total Points with Weight

In this calculation method, a student’s cumulative score is based on the total points a student earned, divided by the total points attempted within each assignment type. The assignment type cumulatives are then averaged together based on their weights.

For Example:

Homework: 30%
Quizzes: 40%
Exams: 20%
Participation: 10%

Within each of those categories, assignments can be worth different point values.

Create an Assignment

Assignments View for Fall 2020: Please note this view has changed significantly over the summer. The video below provides an overview.

Create a graded item for your gradebook. This also alerts students and parents as to when a task was assigned and when it's due.

Standard Assignment

You can use an assignment to send and receive files from a student. An alternative approach would be to use Google Drive.

When creating an assignment, you can attach a file to it:

Then you can enable students to submit files:

Turnitin

If you use Turnitin, do NOT go to Turnitin's website. Everything works through the LMS without any account configuration. So long as everything flows through the LMS, you'll be fine. Headaches occur when setting up conflicting accounts through Turnitin.

Online Assessment

A frequently asked question with assessments is how a teacher could take a scanned image or an old PDF they've built ages ago and reuse the questions on our online multiple choice questions. Check out the video below. In that, I also use the skill explained in Recording Your Screen.

Another frequently asked question is, can I import an assessment from another teacher? Sure! Sharing is caring. Just use the import feature. Here's what that looks like:

Discussion

Discussions are a type of assignment you can create in the LMS, but like any assignment, it doesn't need to affect the gradebook. There are some great features that allow you to grade students based on their first post as well as their replies to other students.

Rubrics

Make grading easier while providing granular feedback to students. It's great! You first need to create a rubric.

Extra Credit

Import from previous year

If you've already written up nice directions and setup the total points an assignment is worth, you need not repeat this effort. Here's how you take a previous year's or semester's assignment and add it to your current course.

Mark it Missing

When an assignment is marked missing, students and parents are alerted. Don't wait until you get to grading all student submissions to note that one was never handed in.

This is one of the most requested items from our parents

Report Cards & Comments

The way we've setup our Blackbaud LMS, comments and final grades do not get sent to parents and transcripts via the Gradebook tab on your class page but rather the Grading tab.

Don't forget to Calculate

You have to manually push the current averages from the Gradebook to the Grading tab. This allows us to adjust final averages and assure things are just the way we want them even while new activity may be taking place in the Gradebook. However, if you want new developments reflected in the committed grade, recalculate.