1. Best Practices for using schoology to Implement standards-based grading
Jack Ballard
Palo Alto Unified School District
Learning Summit
February 15, 2017

2. Purpose
Outcome
Provide instruction on how to use Schoology as a tool to support standards-based grading
Participants feel confident using Schoology to jump into standards- based grading

3. About Me
Assistant Principal of Teaching and Learning for Science, Math, and CTE at Gunn High School
Support educational technology integration
Pursuing an EdD from San Francisco State University
Researching the gap between research and practice

4. Definitions Mastery Grading
Students have the ability to demonstrate their knowledge until they show proficiency
Retakes
Alternate forms of assessment
Multiple opportunities to show mastery
Standards-Based Grading
Grades are aligned with mastery on a defined set of course outcomes
Often used in conjunction with each other
Many people conflate the two terms
Schoology supports both practices

5. Assumptions
You are already philosophically convinced about standards-based and mastery grading.
You want to implement standards-based and mastery grading in your classroom.
You’re unsure about how to go about the transition.
You want tools and examples to support implementing a new grading system.
You are a beginning-to-intermediate Schoology user.
You do not need to be a power-user.

6. Origins of this session
Working with a team of science teachers piloting standards-based and mastery grading (Hi Cathy! Hi Mark!)
Learning experience for administrators, teachers, students, and parents
Consulted with Ken O’Connor
How to Grade for Learning, K-12, 3rd Edition
Purchase on Amazon
Discovered methods for using Schoology to support this grading system
Some teachers using different tools
Recommend using Schoology for as many tasks as possible
Believe that new techniques need to be implemented in public and knowledge needs to be shared

7. Table of Contents Beginning of the year communication
Getting all parents on Schoology
Adding learning objectives
Configuring your gradebook
Configuring mastery view
Adding standards-aligned assignments
Adding standards-aligned assessments
Recording student progress
Continuing communication

8. Beginning of the year Communication
Situate yourself as someone working towards building a system that is better for students
Define the principles behind your system
Define the essential learning outcomes for your course
Skill
Content
Keep the number manageable (8-12)
Define your logic rule for determining letter grades
Make it clear that you welcome feedback and will be actively iterating upon your system until it works for students
Share with counseling department, FOS, AVID, SPED
Examples

9. Getting all parents on schoology
Access your course
Select ”View Course As” from “Course Options”

10. Getting all parents on schoology
Parent names listed under student names
Find parents to contact via or phone
Schoology access instructions for parents

11. Adding Learning Objectives
Personal or group resource
Personal resources are what to use if you are doing this on your own not recommended.
Group resources are what to use if your course team has created a group to share materials and learning objectives.

12. Personal Resource Select ”Learning Objectives”
Create a folder to hold the objectives for each course

13. GROUP Resource – COURSE TEAM
Select the group for your course
Select “Options” and choose “Enable Learning Objectives” to create a folder

14. Adding Objectives Select your learning objective folder Select “Add”
Able to choose between custom objectives or state standards (Common Core and NGSS included)
Custom learning objectives written in student friendly language with easy to read titles are recommended over using built in standards.

15. Custom Learning Objectives
Give each objective an easy to read title
Include the specific learning target(s) in the description

16. Configuring Your Gradebook
The gradebook is only used to track completion and to report a final grade after each unit.
Categories are purely functional. They are not used to calculate or determine grades. They can still give you good data about the general academic skills students have.
Make your current semester equal to 100% of the weight for grading periods. This will make sure you are all set to use the upcoming IC grade integration feature for posting grades.
Configuring Your Gradebook
Categories
Grading Periods & Final Weights

17. Configuring Your Gradebook
The A +/- scale is already built-in to all of your courses.
The rounding checkbox does not actually matter since Schoology will display, not calculate your grades.
The grade period override column is very important. It is a key setting for using Schoology to report and track using standards-based grading.
You will always want hide overall grades checked since we do semester, not year-long grades.
Until you finish your first unit of a semester, you will want to have the box checked to hide grading period grades.
Configuring Your Gradebook
Final Grade Settings

18. Configuring your gradebook
Creating a mastery scale
You want to select a scale based on points.
You can name the scale whatever you like. “Mastery” is a decent title.
You need to assign the points in decreasing order (4,3,2,1).
You can use a different description for proficiency than the one in the screenshot.
You will want to click the star next to the mastery scale to make it your default scale. This is nice for once you set up mastery view.

19. Configuring Mastery View
Mastery View is where the the tracking of learning objectives occurs.
Configuring Mastery View

20. Configuring Mastery View
These are the settings for when you view the default “Student Achievement” view when you switch to Mastery View. You can always look at scores by individual student and by objective as a class if you need to drill down further.
Using a four point scale, Meets Expectations gets set to 3, and Exceeds Expectations gets set to 4. It’s your decision if you want to use the mastery setting. If you are a subject like PE where there is quite a bit of repetitive practice compared to other subjects, this could be useful. It is also useful just to get an overall perspective of mastery. If you have very few grades for each objective, the mastery setting is not very useful either.
Grading overall learning objectives by highest score just effects the display, since Schoology helps you determine grades, but it does not calculate them. You can also select average, which once again is most useful if your standards contain quite a bit of repetitive practice, where consistency matters. Otherwise, highest score is more inline with the philosophy of standards-based grading.
Make sure that achievement levels are viewed using the mastery scale. This lets the scoring of objectives be on the mastery scale, so only final grades have a letter grade attached. This is symbolic and helps students move into a culture of feedback rather than a culture of grading.
Configuring Mastery View

21. Adding Standards-Aligned Assignments
Assignments allow students to make free-form submissions. They are able to submit documents this way.
Set up a Schoology assignment how you normally would with all the necessary information.
You will need to choose one of three options for the scale/rubric. You either need to select mastery, create a new rubric, or select an existing rubric. Rubric is the suggested form for detailed feedback since mastery just gives it a score.

22. Aligning an Assignment using a scale
You can use predefined standards, but adding custom objectives that are rewritten in student friendly language is best.
You can use personal, group, or school standards. Most schools don’t have standards set up, but an example would be aligning to SLOs as well as content or skill standards.

23. Aligning an Assignment using a Rubric
Apply your grading scale.
Click +Learning Objectives to align a criteria and scale with a learning objective.
You can click +Criteria to add non-aligned criteria. This allows you to still provide feedback on things that don’t belong in their mastery grade.
You want to make sure to edit the scale to provide more detailed information about each piece of the scale.

24. Adding Standards-Aligned Assessments
You can also use Schoology AMP to create common assessments this way. This is beyond the scope of this session. Chris Bell is running a session on Schoology AMP in the afternoon.
Create the Schoology assessment the way you normally would. Make sure the scale selected is your Mastery scale. If you made sure to set it as your default, this is already there.

25. Aligning individual questions
Look for the target at the bottom to align items.
Short-Answer/Essay Questions also allow you to choose an existing rubric or create a new one.
You build your assessment in the same way as you would normally build a Schoology assessment.

26. Recording Feedback
Give feedback to assignments and assessments the way you normally would using Schoology.
Feedback tool
Rubric
Score
Auto-graded
You can still use flags to mark assignments as missing.
Doesn’t factor into mastery view
You will use mastery view to determine, not calculate, an overall course grade using a traditional grading scale.
This is why you turned on manual grade override and turn off the overall grade view until you have completed at least one unit.

27. Recording Retakes/revisions
Replace the score
Can be automated by allowing multiple attempts or submissions
Don’t have a record of learning progress in mastery view OR
Make a copy of the assignment or assessment
Individually assign to students
Allows you to only assign a retake once students demonstrate they are ready (reflection or task completion)
Keeps retakes confidential
Can make multiple copies to develop personalized retakes
The symbol with the three colored dots will allow you to individually assign assignments or assessments.
Know of some teachers who use standards-aligned item banks to great effect. Combine item banks with individual assigned assessments, and you have computer automated personalized learning.
Combining standards-aligned item banks with completion rules on materials also allows you to create self-paced, personalized learning as well.

28. Determining Course grades using mastery view
Determine a course grade at the end of every unit when you have enough assignments and assessments to make a more summative determination.
Involve students, parents, and other educators in the process
Students learn to follow the logic rule themselves.
Student logic rule handout
Suggestion: After unit one, make a homework assignment for students to show their parents how to look at mastery view to determine a grade using the form.
Collect student forms, double-check their work, and use this to enter an overall grade
Keep blank forms in your room, so students can do their own formative grade checks if they want to.
Suggestion: Share a copy of this form with FOS, AVID, case managers, and your counseling department.

29. Reading Mastery View – Student Achievement
Using the settings you configured earlier, you can get a student-by-student, objective-by-objective break down. This is great for getting a read on all of your students and your class as a whole.
Shows you a class average for each aligned objective
Blank – Has not completed any work aligned to that objective
Red – Does not meet expectations
Light green – Meets expectations
Dark green – Exceeds expectations
Star – Met or exceeded expectations the number of times that you set

30. Reading Master View – Learning objectives
Shows class average scores for each assignment or assessment aligned to each objective. This gives you another, more detailed way to look at your course level data to make high level instructional decisions.

31. Reading Mastery View – Student Objective report
Click on any individual student in student achievement view. This is what students see when they go to mastery view, and this is how you can determine individual student grades.
You are able to use your logic rule to determine scores for individual objectives and then to determine an overall grade. The student form is the same as what you can use as well. As mentioned earlier, having the students do the heavy lifting, so you can just do a double-check gives students more ownership and saves you some time.
Do this after each unit, so students know how this affects their overall course grade.

32. Recording course grades
Use the determination from your logic rule to enter your final course grade. You can do this after each unit.

33. You will have to rehide the grading period grades once you start the second semester.
After Your First Unit
Uncheck ”Hide grading period grades” once you have completed the logic rule with the students

34. Continuing communication
After each unit, students should complete a self- determination of their grade using the logic rule
Send a Schoology course message out to parents letting them know that a unit is completed and that the overall course grade is updated.
Attach the logic rule form every single time

35. Sending A Course Message
All members = teachers if linked sections, students, and parents
Admins = teachers if linked sections
Members = students
Parents = parents
Able to include attachments or links like with a course update or an individual Schoology message. Unlike an update, parents can respond to you with an individual message that is not displayed as a comment.