Rolling over a course to a new term in Schoology

This is the time of year when I remember how much I forget, the time of year when I am rolling over educational assets in Schoology from one term to the next. I forget and then rediscover that there is a sequence to the work. This article is a broad brush strokes sketch of the process, a set of notes to my future self more than anything else.

Start by saving the existing course materials to personal resources from the Materials: Options menu in the pre-existing course. This saves the materials as a folder with resources. My Resources are already set up with separate folders for each subject, I put the new resources folder inside the appropriate existing subject area folder.

Next I spawn a new section using Courses: See All: Add Section.

The next step is to set term from the Gradebook: Grade setup: Grading Periods & Final Weights by clicking on the Edit button to the right of this section.

I often forget to set the term first, and the result is that when I populate the new section with materials, they import without being assigned a term. When I later add the term, the existing materials do not inherit the term assignment. The materials remain unassigned to a term. The result for the user is that assignments "do not appear" in the Gradebook. Actually, the materials are there, but they are listed under a "(No grading period) option buried in a drop down menu of the Gradebook. The fix is to set the term first. If, as I often do, one forgets, then each class assignment will have to be individually assigned to the current term from a Grading options setting in the individual assignment.*

This term a pre-existing Spring 2017 was available. I chose to use the existing term although technically that term closes on the last day of finals rather than the last day to submit grades.

After setting up the term in the new section, I navigate back to the pre-existing course. From Gradebook: Grade Setup I use the Copy Settings button to copy the existing Categories, Grading Scales, and Rubrics to the new section. I think of this as "copying forward." One cannot "reach back" from the new section and import these items, one has to navigate to the pre-existing section. Note that accessing this section will require navigating to Courses: See All: Archived as the pre-existing section has likely already been archived.

Then I return to the new section and Import from Resources the materials I previously saved.

I then navigate to the desired previously saved materials.

Drill into the Statistics folder.

While apparently I could import the whole folder, I have not tried this option. I drill into the folder.

And then click on the Title check box to select all materials.

And then press import.

I will have to go into each assignment and set up due dates, lock dates, and make any editing changes I might want to make, but the bulk of my work in setting up the course is complete. This leaves me more time to redevelop materials and make curricular adjustments.

One other roll over task is also done at this point. I remove the "drop lowest" quiz/homework setting in the Gradebook: Grade Setup. Leaving those in causes the lowest assignment to be dropped when the second assignment is submitted. When this happens early in the term, this confuses the observant student. I set the "drop lowest" setting back to zero.

And, yes, one of the first things I do is give each section a unique profile picture. These pictures appear in the Courses: menu and provide an additional visual cue for the student.

* Manually setting the Category term post-hoc

Clicking on Grading options opens up the term setting control