Course grades

How to log and publish your students' grades in FULL FABRIC

Cláudia Duarte avatar
Written by Cláudia Duarte
Updated over a week ago

Grades are one of the many aspects of student life that you can manage in FULL FABRIC, so let's take a look into how you can do it. 😃

Where can I manage the grades of a course?

To manage someone's grades for a course, you must ensure that, aside from the programme having a study plan, your students have transcripts and are registered in the right courses. Once that's taken care of, you can find the grades editor through the academic calendar, clicking the relevant course on the sidebar to open the respective settings menu:

Therein, you'll find two tabs of interest at the very bottom: Grades and Grades setup:

In a few words, Grades is where you enter and publish your students' classifications, and Grades setup is where you design a grading system – which involves defining which methods of assessment are to be employed (for instance, exams, assignments and quizzes, or other criteria such as participation and punctuality) and the appropriate grading scale for each. Below we discuss each tab in detail.

How can I customize a grading scheme for a specific course?

To configure the adequate grading scheme for a course, go to the aforementioned Grades setup tab. By default, it starts out with only the Final grade, but you can add partial grade inputs to represent different forms of evaluation by tapping Add partial, like so:

You'll then be asked to insert a Name of your choice and determine how much that partial should Weight into the final:

As you add one or more partial grades, they'll be listed in the sidebar along with their weights – not just for access, but also to provide a quick overview of the entire structure. There's no limit to the number of partial grades a course can have, but the combined total should be 100%:

Inside a grade, the first thing to define is the Scale type you want, as everything else is dependent on it. Continuous is the default, but you can also pick Discrete and Qualitative:

  • Continuous — A point-based scoring system able to take on any value along the continuum from zero to 100 or even higher. Decimals are permitted.

  • Discrete — A numeric metric based on a finite range of possible values solely consisting of whole numbers.

  • Qualitative — A finite letter or rubric scale. For instance, "Unsatisfactory", “Satisfactory,” “Very Good” and so on.

If you select Continuous, you'll have to set the Minimum and Maximum range values as well as how many Decimal places to display. But if you select Discrete or Qualitative, you'll instead have to define the Range, that is, which options are to be available, separated by a comma and a space. See some examples below:

To delete a partial grade, press DELETE PARTIAL GRADE on the upper right-hand corner:

Regarding the Final grade, it also requires selecting a Scale type and accordingly configuring it. However, the Final grade can never be deleted, only edited.

Entering and publishing grades

Entering and publishing grades is achieved in the tab Grades. By default, it's comprised of four columns: the NAME and EMAIL address of the student, their FINAL GRADE, a PASS / FAIL control and a COMMENTS section for staff and lecturers, in that order. Nevertheless, other columns may appear:

  • If you previously added partial grades, they'll be positioned between EMAIL and FINAL GRADE.

  • If on the Details tab you chose Yes to Allow custom transcript course name, a CUSTOM TRANSCRIPT COURSE NAME input will precede COMMENTS. This feature allows you to decide if you want a specific course to have a custom name in the individual transcripts. So, for example, if you have a course that's connected to a final project, such as a thesis, you may want to display the name of each student's individual project instead of just "Final project".

  • Lastly, you may also have CALCULATED GRADE, which automatically calculates the students' final grades for you, but only if the partials are all quantitative – in other words, Continuous and/or Discrete. It goes right behind the FINAL GRADE.

[resize output image]

The way the Grades register works is straightforward. For the first part, which is entering the grades, you manually type them in, tap PASS or FAIL as befitting, and then have the option to write in a CUSTOM TRANSCRIPT COURSE NAME or leave any COMMENTS (only visible to staff and lecturers). In addition, whenever a student retakes an exam or resubmits an assignment, you may insert a resit grade by hovering over the relevant row and pressing the + button, whereby a second text box will turn up:

When you enter a resit, the math on the resulting CALCULATED GRADE is based on the highest graded attempts, meaning that the lowest scores are not factored in. To remove a resit, just delete the content of the field and tap outside, after which the field will disappear.

By the way, you can use hotkeys to reduce mouse clicks and speed up your work, as they allow you to move between grade inputs with your keyboard:

[Tab ↹]

[Shift ⇧] + [Tab ↹]

Lets you move forward to the next field or button. When you reach the end of the row, it'll then take you to the first field of the row below.

This combination lets you move backwards to the previous field or button. When you reach the start of the row, you'll be taken to the last field of the row above.

[Enter ↵]

Up [↑] & Down [↓] arrow keys

A versatile key! If you're on a button, press [Enter ↵] to select and again deselect. Similarly, if you're on a drop down field, press [Enter ↵] to select the highlighted option and collapse the list.

Alternatively, if you're not on a button field, you can use the [Enter ↵] key to move down the same column.

Use the [↑] and [↓] keys on a drop down field to open the list, and then again to move the selector through the list.

Carrying on, what you next need to do to actually publish a group of grades or even all of them, is open the GRADES PUBLISHER at the top right-hand corner and select the grades in question as instructed below:

As you tick one or multiple boxes, a green cloud will appear on the left as a confirmation that the corresponding grade will be published, accompanied by a legend at the bottom of the screen:

Then, upon completion of the selection, press SAVE CHANGES.

Unpublishing a grade is similar: you reopen the editor via the GRADES PUBLISHER button, untick the boxes belonging to the target published grades (identifiable by a grey cloud, presently transitioning to a red one, as demonstrated in the legend), and tap SAVE CHANGES again.

COMMENTS are published and unpublished together with the FINAL GRADE, but remain internal. Students cannot see them anywhere, as it's a supporting field for the exclusive use of school personnel and the professoriate.

Importing grades

It's also possible to import grades via a CSV spreadsheet!

Before importing grades, please note that:

  • The import matches with students via either the email address or a Full Fabric sequential ID field generated within Full Fabric ("student ID" fields which are created as single-line text fields in Full Fabric are not currently supported)

  • Importing will overwrite unpublished grades

  • Importing will not overwrite published grades

  • It's not possible to publish or unpublish grades via the import

  • It's not possible to import resit grades

To import, start by downloading the import template CSV file. This provides an export of all of the current students, their course grades, email addresses and IDs (if available).

You can either edit this spreadsheet and populate it with the student grades, or edit your grade export from your other Learning Management System and use the same column headers as in the import template. You can remove column headers which you do not need to import.

Note that your import file should always include at least one of the following columns of information, that will be used to map your file to the existing student list:

  • Email address

  • Sequential ID

Through the import, it's possible to import:

  • Partial and final grades

  • The pass/fail status

  • Comments

Once you have finished creating the spreadsheet simply upload and import it!

Important: Your file should be saved in the following format - CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) .csv

If there are any errors with the import, then the whole import will fail, and you will receive an error message, and CSV download if there are any cell-specific error messages.

Simply download the file, correct it as necessary and re-import, following the same steps.

Where are grades published to?

Grades are published in the student's transcripts, both on the back office side and on the student side. Consequently, you should only publish a grade once you want to make it official, as your students will be able to see their published grades:

Viewing the grade edit and publish history

If you want to see who edited/ published grades and when they were published, you can view this by clicking on the history icon. Please note that this records every single change to grades, so every edit is recorded, not only when the grades are published. Please see an example below. IMPORTANT - please note that only grade changes from 26th February 2024 have been recorded and will be displayed.

*

You have reached the end of this article. Thanks for reading! 🤓 If you have any questions or comments on the topic at hand, or if you enjoy reads like this and have article requests, let us know. Also, please leave a rating below. Your feedback is highly appreciated! 💖


_________________

PUBLISHED: April 21, 2021
LAST UPDATED: December 15, 2021 at 10:50 a.m.

Did this answer your question?