Manage Course Settings

Manage the following:

• course thumbnail and color
  • recommended thumbnail file type: PNG or JPG (Pearson Connexus converts all files into PNGs)
  • ideal thumbnail size: 400px x 400px (Pearson Connexus automatically resizes images, so uploading images smaller than 400px x 400px may reduce quality)
  • For more information, review this video on How to Change Your Course Card/Tile Color.
• Course title: It is best practice to add any custom identifiers to the end of a course title.
  Do not remove the original course title or course information.
• term
  • If your domain has School years defined, this is field is labeled School year and allows you to select the year.
• start and end dates
• whether it's a Continuous Course (if so, specify the number of days the course should run for).
• whether to use agendas in this course.
• the course's look-and-feel with a Hero image that appears fullscreen at the top of the Activity player (shown below).
  • recommended file type: PNG or JPG
  • ideal size: 2400px x 750px (450K max file size)

Gradebook options

Manage:

1. Passing Score is the minimum percentage a student must earn to pass the course.
   • This percentage is also used as the minimum passing score for individual activities unless a different value is set for an activity in Activity Settings>Advanced Gradebook Options.
2. The desired Passing score Grade Scale.
3. The Minimum activity score (0-100), which is the lowest score a student can be given on any activity. If a lower score is given, Pearson Connexus automatically defaults to this value.
   This feature is not supported by Multi-outcome scoring.
4. The way(s) you want student performance indicated: Points, Percent (%), Letter grade, and/or Minutes spent. This option impacts Course Cards and the Grades/Gradebook tools. If you choose multiple formats, Letter grade takes priority, then Points, and then Percentage.

Note: Grade scales can be disabled by your administrator. If you can't find a setting that you think you should have, contact your system admin.

Multi-outcome scoring

To set up Multi-Outcome Scoring:

1. Select Enable multi-outcome scoring.
2. Select Add Scoring Outcome.
3. Check the boxes next to the pre-existing outcomes that you want to track.
4. Select Done.

Grading Categories

Grading Categories lists existing grading categories for editing and allows you to create new categories.

Grading periods

Grading Periods allow you to enable, create, and define individual grading periods within the course. There are two approaches to using Grading Periods:

• Your system admins can set up domain-level Grading Periods for your courses to align to. Domain-level Grading Periods establish a current School year and current period that you can use to organize your own Grading Periods. If you are using domain-level Grading Periods, align your course Grading Periods one-to-one with the domain-level Grading Periods.
• You are able to enable, create, define, and manage your own Grading Periods within your course. The grades for these periods can be finalized individually.

Note: This setting can be disabled by your administrator. If you can't find a setting that you think you should have, contact your system admin.

Objective Mastery (only available in core courses)

Note: These settings appear only if you have objectives in the course.

Manage objective mastery in core courses:

• The minimum objective mastery threshold in percents.
• Objective mastery Grade Scale.
• Formative assessments by specifying:
  • the minimum number of questions that need to be aligned with an objective for a student to show mastery
  • the overall minimum score (%) a student has to earn on those questions in order to skip the activities meant to teach the objective

• Remediation assessments by specifying:
  • the minimum number of questions that need to be aligned with an objective in order for Pearson Connexus to assess mastery
  • the overall minimum score (%) a student can earn on those questions before receiving remediation activity suggestions

Grade scales

Create pass/fail, plus/minus, straight letter grade, and other Grade Scales to use for course and objective scoring.

Advanced options

Note: The Advanced options card appears only if Enable advanced course settings is turned on in your domain.

Manage the following options:

• Allow students to see comparative class statistics Grades > Analytics screen.
• Hide student course-completion percentage.
• Automatically assign the minimum activity score to past-due activities (after being enabled, this setting can take up to 24 hours to be applied to all relevant activities).
  • When enabled, a Mark activities complete when minimum score is auto-assigned checkbox appears to manage how the activity status is handled.
  • The minimum activity score is assigned when the due date passes, even if students are allowed late submissions.
  • Note: Students can be excused from this setting by an administrator as part of their Accommodations.
    Note: The Limit number of options on multiple choice questions to field is currently in-operational.
    

• Automatically allow retries for below-passing activities.
  • Formative assessments are excluded from this setting.
  • Automatic retries are granted until the  due date or grace period has passed and override the Number of attempts set for an assessment.
  • When activities are granted retries, a retry icon appears with the activity in multiple locations.
  • Minimum passing scores are set for the course in Gradebook options and can be set for individual activities.
• Hide teacher names in student reports (If not hidden, teacher first and last names appear in various places in the student Grades tool).
• Students must complete each activity in order.
  • Note: This course-wide setting does not work in most courses. If you are unclear which courses might be affected, contact Pearson Connexus Support. Review the article Making an Activity's Visibility Dependent on Activity Completion for steps on how to change this setting for individual activities within a course.

The When auto-generating due dates section allows you to manage settings that are applicable only in continuous enrollment courses): 

• Provide less time for activities that require only viewing (Only applicable in continuous enrollment courses)
  • When unchecked, all activities are considered equally to calculate the time allowed for each and what due date to assign.
  • When checked, activities that require only viewing get less time than other activities.
  • Note: To create an activity that requires only viewing from the student, use the Assignment, Custom Activity, Rich-text, or Website link Activity types and disable the This activity is gradable option.
    • Technical note: If you create activities through the XLI API, activities that require only viewing are non-gradable items whose type is AssetLink or Resource.
• Assign the same due date to activities within a folder

Course Links

Course Links allow you to provide students with links to important course resources. Students can access these links from the Course Links button in the Course Home (Activities tool) toolbar.

Enrollment completion

Enrollment Completion indicates which of the following ways course completion is triggered. This is particularly important for continuous enrollment courses, because learners can move at their own pace.

• Manual completion; where the teacher marks completion.
• Automatic when all are complete; this option asks you to check or uncheck the Require course passing score and Require retries to be completed boxes. When the Pearson Online Classroom (POC) automatically marks a course as complete, the final score is calculated and reported in Final Grades.
  • With this selection, you can choose to:
    • Require course passing score.
    • Require retries to be completed.
• Automatic when all gradable activities are complete; this option asks you to check or uncheck the Require course passing score and Require retries to be completed boxes. When the POC automatically marks a course as complete, the final score is calculated and reported in Final Grades.
  • With this selection, you can choose to:
  • Require course passing score.
  • Require retries to be completed.
  • Assign minimum activity score to unscored activities when enrollment automatically completes.