Markbooks

The Achievement area of Maplewood connectEd provides the tools to record students’ marks and comments which can be shared with students, parents, and used on report cards. Some teachers may want to record more assessment information than just the marks and comments for report cards. This additional classroom assessment information may be recorded in a markbook, as described in this section of the manual.

Before any teacher may begin to use the Achievement options in Maplewood connectEd, the school office must first set up some important parameters that are vital to the achievement area. Maplewood’s staff works closely with divisions, boards, and individual schools to ensure that the setup is done correctly and in a manner that will allow the school’s report cards to be generated. Before reading this section on markbooks, please first read the section on Report Cards, including General Overview of the Office Setup for Report Cards to help understand key concepts and terminology used in the achievement area, including the entry of the report card marks and comments.

Markbooks are simply another layer of marks/comments in the Marks/Comments by Class and Marks/Comments by Students areas of Maplewood connectEd. If you are not yet familiar with these areas, please take a moment to read at least one of these sections.

The markbook section of the manual is explained in 4 sections:

Setting Up a Markbook
Curriculum in Markbooks
Homework
Copy Markbooks

In addition to this, you might also read these sections:

Achievement Reports
Sharing Achievement Information with Students and Parents

Here is a summary of the key concepts of markbooks that are explained primarily in the Setting Up A Markbook section:

• The school office determines whether or not the teacher has access to the markbooks.
• The school office determines the type of markbook (see Cumulative vs Non-Cumulative Markbook for a description of the different styles).
• The report card controls the terms and topics/subtopics setup for each class.
• Markbook entry is typically entered for one class at a time, however classes with the same terms and topics may be linked (before markbooks are used) so that both class lists can optionally appear on the mark entry screens.
• Every topic/subtopic that gets evaluated in the report card can have its own markbook (e.g. if the report card has an overall grade along with an evaluation for the Learning Skill 'Responsibility', then markbooks may be created for the Grade topic as well as the Responsibility subtopic, however, a teacher will typically only create one markbook (usually tied to the overall grade)).
• Markbooks use teacher-defined categories to help organize the marks that will be recorded in the markbook. Example categories might be Tests, Assignments, Quizzes or they might be Knowledge, Communication, Application, or any configuration that the teacher chooses to use. If categories are not required, one category must still be created but it could be called Marks.
• Categories can be weighted toward the report card mark for the markbook. Weights can be any value and don't necessarily have to add to 100 (but often that is the most logical weighting).
• Categories may be published to the parents and students.
• Markbook items are the individual assessment results (e.g. test scores, project marks, participation marks) that the teacher wants to record in the markbook.
• Markbook items are assigned to categories.
• Markbook items can be weighted toward the overall category mark, so that the teacher can determine how much influence the mark has on the overall category mark.
• Categories are weighted toward the overall mark.
• Any calculated marks (e.g. category mark and overall mark) may be overwritten by the teacher. Overwritten marks appear with a yellow background. Deleting the overwritten mark will return it to the calculated mark.
• Markbook items can be given an assessment type of diagnostic, formative, or summative, where the first two types will default 0 weighting since they typically don't influence the student's overall mark.
• Markbook items may be published to the parents and students.
• Markbook items can include up to 2 comment per item: comments for the teacher's use only (unpublished) and comments published to the student and parents.
• Markbooks are accessed using the Marks/Comments by Class and Marks/Comments by Grade options within the Achievement area of Maplewood connectEd. The topic/subtopic that has no markbook yet will have a blue hyperlink (e.g. it's in blue and underlined like Grade and Responsibility in the screen below). The hyperlinks will appear in black once a markbook exists.
  
  
  
  
• Click the topic or subtopic hyperlink to see a menu of actions.
• The hyperlink menu, for a brand new markbook, only includes "Add Markbook Category" (along with the group comment actions that always appear), since at least one category must exist in each markbook:
  
  
  
  
• Once a category has been defined, a markbook exists. Markbook items are added through the hyperlink menu for the category using the option 'Add Markbook Item'. This is the option the teacher uses to create a new assessment area to record an evaluation:
  
  
  
  
• Markbook items may apply to all students in the class or students may be excluded from the evaluation.
• Markbook items may be associated with the course curriculum so that the teacher may keep track of what parts of the curriculum have been assessed.
  Homework may be assigned to markbook items.
• Markbooks may be copied from one class to another or from year to year.
• Categories and Items may be visible (expanded) or hidden (collapsed) using the and icons, and the Options icon allows the user to control whether items and/or categories are displayed, and in what order. It is even possible to change the order of the categories and items if the order in which they were entered is not the preferred order.
• Tools are also available within the markbook that show class and student marks statistics based on the assessment information that has been entered.

Here's an example of a markbook in the Marks/Comments by Class area:

Definition of Markbook Terminology:

Categories are subsections of the reporting topic/subtopic as set up by the office. For example, if the report card prints a grade, but as a teacher you would like to break your evaluation for the grade down further into three main areas, these would be Categories, (e.g. Tests, Assignments and Participation).

Items are elements of an above-defined Category. For example, as a teacher you would like to further break down your evaluation for the Category of Tests to show the results of Test 1, Test 2 and Test 3 independently. The three tests would be Items of the Category Tests.

Denominator: This is the “out of” number, which by default is set to 100. This is the number of available marks for an item, or the expression written below the line in a common fraction that indicates the number of parts into which one whole is divided. For example, rather than having to convert 20/25 to a mark of 80, simply have the denominator for an Item set to 25 and enter the marks out of 25. The system will then make the appropriate calculations. The Denominator gives teachers the ability to record raw marks, rather than having to do calculations into percentages. Unless tied directly to the weight, (to be explained later) the denominator has no relation to the importance/weight of an Item.

Tip: If the Category’s Denominators are set to 100, the mark in this column will be represented as a percentage.

Weight: All Categories and Items by default are given a weight of 10. Weights need to be defined for each Category and each Item created. Category weights work as a ratio/percentage against other weighted Categories in a markbook. Item weights also work as a ratio/percentage against other weighted items within a Category. For example, all Category weights could be set to have a weight of 10, which makes all categories worth the same value towards the markbook topic, or they could be set to numbers that total 100 (ie. Tests 30, Assignments 60, Participation 10 =100). Item weights work in the same manner as Category weights. Weights do not need to add up to 100 for either Categories or Items, but they can be setup as such, if this gives the desired result for the grade.

Giving an Item a weight of zero (0) will cause that item not to be calculated into the Category at all. Similarly, a Category with a weight of zero (0) will not be calculated into the term mark.

Subcategories are another level of the markbook that can be used, between Categories and Items.