Administer Assignments

The Administer Assignments page allows you to enter course assignments for your active courses, including extra credit assignments.

Notes:

• Categories must be established for the course before you can enter assignments.

• For each assignment you create, you must specify an assignment category and enter an assignment description and the total number of possible points for the assignment. You can also enter the assignment date and due date, which are helpful when sorting grades on the Assignment Grades page.

• You can only enter assignments for active courses.

• Assignment names must be unique within each category.

• You cannot make changes to assignments once the cycle is closed.

From this page, you can also copy assignments to other courses.

To set up assignments:

1. From the Settings menu, select Administer Assignments.

The Administer Assignments page is displayed allowing you to enter course assignments for a specified semester, cycle, and course section.

2. In the Semester field, click to select the semester for which you want to enter assignments.

3. In the Cycle field, click to select the cycle for which you want to enter assignments.

4. In the Course Section field, click to select the course section for which you want to enter assignments.

All assignments that have previously been entered for the semester/cycle/course section are displayed. If no assignments have been entered, a blank row will appear allowing you to add an assignment.

5. To add a new assignment if a blank row is not available, click Add New Assignment. You can also press Tab from the last field on the previous row. A new row will appear at the bottom of the assignments list.

6. In the Assignment Name field, type a name for the assignment (e.g., Pop Quiz 1).

Note:  It is helpful to keep the assignment name as brief as possible; however the name should be descriptive enough to distinguish it from other assignments. Longer assignment names will require more space on the Assignment Grades page, which may result in a more cumbersome page.

• Assignment names may be changed at any time, as needed.

• You cannot add duplicate assignment names within a category. If you attempt to enter an assignment name that already exists for the category, a message will be displayed indicating that there is an assignment with the same name.

7. In the Category field, click to select a category for the assignment. These categories are established on the Administer Categories page.

8. In the Date Assigned field, type the date the assignment is due, or click to open the calendar and select a valid date. To close the calendar, you must click a valid date on the calendar.

9. In the Date Due field, type the date the assignment is due, or click to open the calendar and select a valid date. To close the calendar, you must click a valid date on the calendar.

10. In the Total Points field, type the total number of possible points for the assignment. The Total Points field cannot be zero, unless it is an extra credit assignment. This field defaults to 100.

Warning:  If all assignments in a category do not have the same total points value, then the calculations for dropping a specified number of assignments for the category (as indicated in the # Drop field on the Administer Categories page) may result in an average that is different than expected. If the total points value varies, then the grade with the lowest number of points may not necessarily be the lowest grade.

11. In the Extra Credit field, indicate if the assignment is an extra credit assignment. If the assignment is for extra credit, the Total Points field must be set to zero.

12. Extra credit assignments add points to the average for the category selected.

13. If a student has no grade or a zero for the extra credit assignment, it does not count against him when his average is calculated.

See the Extra Credit section on the Calculate Averages page for an explanation of calculating averages with extra credit for each weighting type.

12. In the Notes field, click to add or update optional notes for the assignment. If entered, these notes will be viewable in the parent access Web site, txConnect.

13. Add or update the note in the Note window, and then click Ok. The note window will close, and the note icon will be yellow to indicate that a note was entered.

14. To clear the note for the assignment, click Clear. The note window will close, and the note icon will be gray to indicate that there are no notes entered.

13. To modify data for an assignment, type over the existing data with the new information.

14. To delete an assignment, click under Delete for that assignment in the Delete column.

Note:

• You cannot delete an assignment if grades have been posted for the assignment. The will not appear for those assignments.

• If you delete grades on the Assignment Grades page in order to delete an assignment, you must be sure to delete the grade for any withdrawn student.

To save your assignments:

Before you leave the page, you must save your changes.

1. In the PIN field, type your four-digit PIN.

2. Click Save.

• If your changes were saved successfully, the page will reload, and a message will appear indicating that the assignments were saved successfully.

• If you typed your PIN incorrectly, the system will notify you that you provided an invalid PIN. You must provide the correct PIN before you can continue.

• If the cycle is closed, you may not save any changes. The button will be disabled; the button will say Cycle Closed. If you attempted to make changes, a warning message will notify you that the changes will not be saved.

3. If you have changed any data on the page and then attempt to leave the page without saving the changes, a warning message will appear. This includes attempting to change the Semester, Cycle, or Course Section fields before you save changes.

4. Click Continue to leave this page without saving your changes.

5. Click Cancel to return to the page and save your changes.

To copy assignments to another course section:

Once you have saved assignments for a course, you can copy the assignments to another course section.

1. Use the Semester, Cycle, and Course Section fields to select the course section from which you wish to copy assignments.

2. Click Copy assignments to another course section/cycle. The Copy Assignments page will be displayed. Review the Help for the Copy Assignments page for additional instructions on copying assignments.