Managing Course Settings

Manage:

• 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)
• 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 (this field is titled School year if your domain has domain-level grading periods set up).
• 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.

Gradebook options

Manage:

• minimum Passing Score in percents
• desired Passing score Grade Scale
• how to indicate student performance: 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.

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.

Objective Mastery (only available in core courses)

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
• Hide student course-completion percentage
• Automatically assign zero scores to past-due activities: Admins and Teacher-Authors have the ability to automatically assign zero scores to past-due activities at the course level (The zero is assigned when the due date passes even if students are allowed late submissions.)
  
  • • When this option is selected, admins and Teacher-Authors can now select to mark auto-zeroed activities as complete.
    • Mark auto-zeroed activities as complete: When activities are marked as complete, students may assume they can no longer complete the activities and leave them as zeros rather than completing them and earning credit. Please note that if this option is checked, it will automatically mark auto-zeroed activities as complete for students, including those with accommodations. Admins can exempt students from this by going to Users > Details > Accommodations, then checking the Never automatically assign zeros to my past-due activities checkbox.
      Note: The Limit number of options on multiple choice questions to field is currently in-operational.
      
       

• Hide teacher names in student reports (If not hidden, teacher(s) first and last names appear in various places 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.

When auto-generating due dates:

• 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 item’s whose type is AssetLink or Resource.
• Assign the same due date to activities within a folder

Student tasks

Student tasks allow students to self-assign activities. Decide whether to:

• Enable student tasks
• Enable submissions of student tasks

Enrollment completion

Enrollment Completion indicates which of the following ways course completion is triggered. This is particularly important for continuous enrollment courses, which includes the following:

• Manual completion
• Automatic when all 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 Pearson Online Classroom (POC) automatically marks a course as complete, the final score is calculated and reported in Final Grades.
• 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.

Badges

Variables

The Variables section allows you to create and manage replacement variables for the course.

Use Variables to personalize and optimize content authoring and distribution

Blackout dates

Blackout Dates let you Add, Name, and specify date ranges that you don't want included when Pearson Connexus calculates suggested due dates for continuous enrollment courses. These dates appear on your course calendar.

Publisher options

Publisher options are meant to help manage Master and Derivative courses and your full curriculum. Indicate whether you want to:

• Prevent content edits in derivative courses
• Show indicator for edited content in derivative courses
• Include course in subscriber search index