Monthly Archives

December 2021

clt16
In Smeal Academy Newsletter

Grading and Semester Wrap-Up Essentials – Fall 2021 Newsletter 6

So Much to Grade, So Little Time – Fall 2021 Resilience Newsletter 6

The goal of the Smeal Academy is to equip everyone with best practices and strategies for teaching, learning, and technology to ensure the Smeal community is prepared to respond to the unique challenges of teaching and learning during the Fall 2021 semester. Between now and the end of the Fall 2021 semester, we will be sending periodic emails with practical tips and information, providing live sessions, and holding virtual consultations.

A nod to Art Jones for this image:

The eLDIG team knows you are busy right now and possibly just a little stressed, so we will keep things short, providing a couple of key resources and reminders intended to make your life easier.

Preparing Final Grades in Canvas

These helpful resources will help you wrap up the Fall 2021 semester courses and ship the grades away to LionPATH:

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the eLDIG team.

Current News

Canvas Archiving – Opt Out Before January 25, 2022

On January 25, 2022, Penn State IT will perform its regular archiving of older Canvas courses. Beginning December 7, 2021, you may choose to delay particular courses from being archived by using the in-Canvas Course Archive Manager tool. Please be sure to opt-out of any courses you do not want archived before January 25th.

Archiving on January 25 will include:

  • All LionPATH courses taught prior to, and including, Fall 2020 (LionPATH term 2208) will be archived.
  • All LionPATH courses that you may have previously opted out of archiving will be archived.
  • All non-LionPATH courses, regardless of creation date, including Master, Manually Created, Sandbox courses, and Prides will be archived.

Full details on the long-term archival storage and instructions on how to opt a course out of archiving are available on the Penn State Canvas website.

Upcoming Live Sessions

  • ITLD Winterfest Training: During December and January, Penn State IT Learning and Development is offering Winterfest training sessions via Zoom on a variety of topics. Winterfest is a collection of courses traditionally focused on faculty. The goal is to help participants learn something new that might help them or improve the experience for their students in the semester to come. Everything from the basics to advanced topics will be covered in Canvas, Kaltura, Office 365, Zoom, and more.

NOTE: Recordings and resources from previous sessions can be found on our eLDIG Website.

Tips of the Week

  • Tip #1:  Export Canvas Grades to Verify Final Grades
    The final grade column is the grade that will import into LionPath. Be sure to export Canvas grades and check the Excel file to make sure that students’ “Current Grade” column is the same as their “Final Grade” column. If these numbers are not the same, then there is an issue somewhere in the Canvas Gradebook that will need to be resolved before importing grades into LionPath.
  • Tip #2: Consider Adding a Student Feedback Survey
    If you want to know things beyond what is asked on the SRTE, you can create your own end-of-semester survey to gather feedback to improve future offerings of your course. Here is one example survey for your reference. NOTE: Smeal has an instance of Qualtrics. If anyone would like to have an account set up, please email the eLDIG team and we’ll get you set up.

Resources

Helpful Websites

Website

Check out the eLDIG Website for more resources and support.

Contact Us

Email us at: smealtlthelp@psu.edu or fill out our Remote Teaching Support form.

Michael Christie
In Video Tech Tips

How to Set Up Your Grading Scheme in Canvas

How to Set Up Your Grading Scheme in Canvas

This video explains how to set up your Grading Scheme in Canvas. You can choose conventional, pre-made grading schemes that are commonly used in Penn State, or you can choose to create a custom scheme which is great for finer adjustments and allowing for the possibility of rounding.

Michael Christie
In Video Tech Tips

Finalizing Your Canvas Gradebook

Finalizing Your Canvas Gradebook

This video explains how to finalize your students’ grades in Canvas. There are three important recommendations in the video:

  1. All grades should have a numeric value in them. A dash ( — ) will count as a zero in the final grade calculation, it will not remove that assignment from overall grade calculation.
  2. Make sure all hidden grades are visible to students. Whether a grade is visible to students or not won’t affect the student’s true grade, but it does allow them to fully understand why they earned the grade they did.
  3. Export the grades in Canvas to an Excel document and check to make sure that students’ listed “Current Grade” is the same as their listed “Final Grade.” If these numbers are not the same, then there is an issue somewhere in the Canvas Gradebook that will need to be troubleshooted.
Michael Christie
In eLDIG News

Pulling Final Grades into LionPath from Canvas

When your semester grading is complete, please consult these resources that cover how to upload your grades from Canvas to LionPATH.

Creating a Compatible Penn State Grading Scheme

In order for LionPATH to successfully pull your grades from Canvas, you first need to create a grading scheme in Canvas with these same letter grades. Then you must activate that grading scheme. If you use the default grading scheme in Canvas or any other letters (e.g., C-) in a scheme, LionPATH will not successfully pull grades from your course. Penn State has created a learning path to walk you through that process.

Preparing Your Final Grades for LionPath

Using LionPATH to import your grades from Canvas is a multi-step process that requires that your Canvas Gradebook is complete and accurate. First, prepare your grades in Canvas. Then verify the accuracy of your grades using a .csv export file. Once you have completed those steps, you have two methods for entering our final grades in to LionPATH.

Penn State has created a Knowledge Base article that describes these steps in detail.

The following video may also be helpful:

If you need any further support with this process, please tell us about your needs so we can begin a conversation!

If you need immediate support, please email eldig@smeal.psu.edu.

Resources

We recommend our April 9, 2020 Smeal Academy Session about Grading and Assessments for more in-depth discussion of assessment and exam strategies, including proctoring options.

Penn State Websites