"Students can learn without grades, but they can't learn without timely, descriptive, feedback." -Rick Wormeli
The purpose of Competency-Based Grading (or Standards-Based Grading) is to eliminate the barriers to learning associated with scores and percentages and get students to focus on learning. Now that you have set up your proficiency scales and defined your standards and learning targets, you are ready to use the competency-based grading module to provide feedback to students to move learning forward.
Teachers, head to Competency-Based Grading > Score Formative Assessments to get started.
Step One: Select the course from the "Courses" drop-down list to access the standards for that course.
Step Two: Select the standard from the "Assessment Area" drop-down list to access the learning targets associated with that standard.
Step Three: Select the learning target from the "Formative Assessment" drop-down list to give students feedback through jmc.
Fun Fact: Student names and formative assessment results will appear in a grid view window with student names on the left column and assessments at the top to see the most amount of information at one time.
Helpful Tip: Double click an assessment to enter a description and to add a date for a specific assessment opportunity.
Step Four: Select a result from an assessment drop-down list to add a level proficiency to a student.
Helpful Tip: Check out these awesome capabilities and features! Click the links on the right side of the page to utilize the following options:
Edit Score Note: Click this link to add a note to the selected score. An asterisk will appear next to scores with notes in jmc Teacher and will be viewable in jmc Student and jmc Family. Apply the note to the selected student or to all students by clicking the corresponding button.
Fill Score Column: Click this link to fill the entire column of scores with the value in the selected score. This is a huge timesaver if most or all students have the same score!
Fun Fact: To manually override a calculation option, click the field in the "Result" column and select the result. A checkmark will appear in the "locked" checkbox to indicate that the result is manually overridden. Removing the checkmark will reset the calculation option.
Step Five: Click the "Publish" button to make the feedback viewable in the Office, Student, and Family portals.