[Feature Focus] Utilizing Admin Gradebook in Edmentum Courseware to Ensure Program Fidelity

Current Edmentum Courseware users, this post is for you. You’re probably already aware of the Admin Gradebook feature, but are you making the most of it to ensure fidelity across your entire program? Here, we’ll cover the basics of Admin Gradebook, and we’ll dive into a few specific details that are important to know when setting up this functionality.

What is Admin Gradebook?

Admin Gradebook allows account administrators to build consistency into their grading and evaluation processes. It authorizes account administrators to set account-wide standardization of grading processes, including setting:

• Educator permissions to customize category weights and scales for course
• Account grading method by course
• Account grading scales

Who is Admin Gradebook for?

All educators may find value in the Admin Gradebook feature, but we especially recommend its use for: 

• Grade Report users who are new to the Gradebook feature
• Accounts with a single implementation type across multiple programs
• Accounts that will need to standardize the grading process for compliance

Why is it important to use Admin Gradebook?

Choosing the settings that best fit your program needs ensures that you’re able to remove ambiguity and grade bias from any program. That’s why we recently added the ability to change instructor permissions within Admin Gradebook. If instructor permissions for editing Gradebook weights and scales are disabled, courses will have either the default or custom grading applied. As a result, all sections within the account using those courses will be impacted, and individual instructors will not be able to make changes to the settings; only administrators can make the changes described above. Conversely, if instructor permissions for editing Gradebook weights and scales are enabled, educators may continue editing weights and scales or may apply account custom weights and scales to their own courses per local policy. This is the default setting.

We are happy to report that we made this change following much research, and after listening to feedback from administrators regarding the need to be able to review classes to ensure that educators were following program goals. In addition to these updates to Admin Gradebook, we also created a new Admin Gradebook Audit Report.

The Admin Gradebook Audit Report generates a summary to monitor Gradebook settings. Educators can clearly see what active sections are being used for grading scales and category weights. This report also allows educators to quickly identify adherence to grading procedures across the account for all instructors using Edmentum Courseware. That information helps determine the next steps to meet local policies and serves as a foundation to building and securing program fidelity.

Interested in learning more about how Edmentum Courseware has been designed to help customize online learning to meet the unique needs of your program and students? Check out these three little-known features that support blended learning!