Getting started with RecordGrade¶

This article will demonstrate how to set up a new school in RecordGrade.

Start by creating an account.

Register an account¶

We enter our name, email, and a strong password and click on register.

You will receive an email from kurt@keysoftwaredevelopment with a link to confirm your email.

Once you have confirmed your email, you can log in to the app with your email and password.

Create a school¶

Once you log in the first time, you will be taken to ‘My Schools’. Here we can create a new school.

Enter the information for your school and click ‘Create’.

Now that we created the school, we can log in by clicking on the ‘Log In’ button.

Create a subscription¶

Logging in will navigate us to the subscription page where we can sign up for a new subscription. Select the plan that meets your needs.

Enter your card information and start your 30 day trial.

We are navigated back to the billing page where you can see your subscription is active.

Assignments¶

Now we can add the necessary information about the assignments our students will take.

Credit types¶

Let’s start by navigating to ‘Assignments’ and selecting ‘Credit Types’. Credit types are the categories of courses and labs that a student will take. Credit types group credit earned on the student’s transcript.

Since we don’t have any credit types, we can click on the ‘Create Defaults’ button to generate a collection of standard credit types.

Select ‘New’ to create a new credit type. Give the credit type a title and click save.

Unit test patterns¶

Test patterns are the backbone of RecordGrade. They tell the app how to calculate a unit grade from test scores. We can use the same test pattern for any unit of any course.

Click on ‘Unit Test Patterns’ to create test patterns for your school.

Since we don’t have any test patterns, we can click on the ‘Create Defaults’ button to generate a collection of standard test patterns.

After creating the default test patterns, let’s look at a pattern more closely. Click on ‘CLE Sunrise’. This pattern looks like the following:

Weight	Average Of
50%	Quiz 1 and Quiz 2
50%	Final

For example, let’s say the student received 83% for Quiz 1, 95% for Quiz 2, and 98% for the Final. The calculated unit grade would be 94%.

We can actually enter multiple test scores for the same test for the same student. The system will automatically average those test scores together.

View the ‘Apologia Lab’ test pattern. This pattern looks like the following:

Weight	Average Of
35%	Lab Average
65%	Exam

We can enter multiple grades for the same student for the Lab Average test. This gives us a greater amount of flexibility, since the number of labs may vary from unit to unit.

For example, let’s say there were three labs in a particular unit. The student received 90% for Lab 1, 82% for Lab 2, 98% for Lab 3, and 100% for the Exam. The calculated unit grade would be 97%.

We cannot close a unit until there is at least one score for each test in the unit test pattern.

Courses¶

Now that we have credit types and test patterns, we can start adding courses to our school. Navigate to ‘Manage Courses’ to do this.

Note, we can import courses from CSV file. Click on ‘Import’ and download the example file to see how to format the document. You can import multiple courses at a time.

Click on the ‘Add Course’ button.

Give the course a title, credit type, grade level and appropriate amount of credits the course should receive once completed.

If we give the course a credit value, the student will receive a part of a credit for each unit completed using the following formula: course credit value / number of units.

We can use the ‘Minimum Grade Level for Credits’ to filter when the student receives credit. The student will only receive credit automatically if they are in that grade or above. For example, if we set it to 9, a 8^th grade student will not automatically receive credit when they complete the course.

Now we add the units to the course. For each unit we provide a title and a test pattern. ‘Add unit’ will automatically increment the last unit title and keep the last test pattern.

Labs¶

Labs are any non-graded assignment a student will receive credit for. Examples of this kind of assignment would be physical education or music, depending on your school’s grading policy. Navigate to ‘Manage Labs’ to create a new lab.

Click on ‘Add Lab’, and give the lab a title, credit type, grade level, and credit value.

A student can only be enrolled in a lab once. This means you will need to create PE 1, PE 2, PE 3, etc if the student receives credit for multiple years.

Students¶

Navigate to the ‘Students’ and select ‘Manage Students’.

We can import students from a CSV file or manually create them.

The system automatically makes a full name for the student from the first, middle, and last. This is used throughout the app to reference the student.

Now we need to create a school year, so we can enroll students in courses.

Years¶

Navigate to ‘Years’ and select ‘Manage Years’.

Click on ‘New’ to create a new school year. Select the start and end date for your school year.

Once you have entered a start and end date, you can click on ‘Generate Quarters’ or ‘Generate Trimesters’. This will automatically split up your year into 4 quarters or 3 trimesters. Obviously, you can split it up into as many or as few quarters as you like.

The Week style for the Report Card is designed for around 9-10 weeks per division. The Total style supports more flexibility.

Once you have created the year, you can select the year from the dropdown on the top navbar.

Year Enrollments¶

Navigate to ‘Enrollments’ to enroll your students in the new year. Make sure the dropdown on the top navbar has the newly created year selected.

You can import enrollments from CSV, as well as export a previous year to CSV. This drastically speeds up the enrollment process.

To manually enroll, find the student in ‘Available Students’ and click ‘Enroll’. Enter the grade level for the student and click ‘Save’.

Assignments¶

Course Enrollments¶

Now that we have enrolled the student for the selected year, let’s navigate back to ‘Assignments’ to enroll our student in a course for this year.

Click on ‘Course Enrollments’ and select an enrolled student from the dropdown.

In ‘All Courses’ we can find the course and click ‘Enroll’. By default, the courses are filtered to the grade level of the selected student, but we can enroll in the student in any course.

Lab Enrollments¶

If necessary, you can also navigate to ‘Lab enrollments.’ The student will remain selected and we can enroll the student in the appropriate lab for the selected year.

Once the student is enrolled, the credit will immediately appear on the student’s transcript. We can override the amount of credit the student receives by clicking ‘Edit’ on an enrolled lab.

Enter test scores¶

Now we can enter test grades for our students by navigating to ‘Grades’ and selecting ‘Test Scores.’

Here we can select any of the courses that any student for the selected year is enrolled in.

Once the course is selected, we can select the unit and test and enter a grade. Notice that after we enter a grade for the test, a plus button appears which allows us to enter another test grade for the same “test”.

After all the tests for a unit have at least one grade for a student, we can click on ‘Close Units’ from the sidebar.

Here we can view the calculated unit grade, override any values and hit close.

Navigate to ‘Students’ and click on ‘Grades’ to see all closed units for the selected year or print the report card.

Attendance¶

You can navigate to ‘Students>Attendance’ to track daily attendance for your students. On the top right, you can select to view Day, Week, or Month, and the date picker allows you to select a date to view.

Once you have selected a valid date, you can click on a tile for a specific student and mark their attendance for that day. You can also click on the day header and update all students for the selected day.

Once a student has any days marked present for a year, the Present, Absent, and Tardy counts will appear on the Report Card, Transcript, and Permanent Record.

Conclusion¶

At this point, check out this article to see an overview of the system in action. That article will cover other features that you have access to, now that your school is set up.

Reach out if you have additional questions on setting up your school.