Collecting Graded Submissions on Checklists

In addition to tallying progress on competency checklists based purely on binary approvals and rejections, many schools have an additional need to capture a grade with each repetition of competency practice. This allows schools to add more color to their student records as they make incremental progress towards mastering skills, as is often required by accrediting boards.

With the Grades feature, schools with supported use cases can require grades be captured by staff for each count of every submission on a skill, and both staff and students can conveniently reference the grades alongside other skills records directly within Checklists on CourseKey.

Configuring Checklists to collect Grades (Admins)

1. To configure a Checklist to collect grades on submissions, admins with “Manage Programs” admin permissions should first toggle the Checklist setting “Require Staff To Grade Submissions” to ON.
   
   
   Checklist Settings modal, where admins can enable and disable the Grades feature

2. Once enabled, admins will then be asked to choose their preferred grading scale based on their use case’s requirements. The grading options are both numeric, and can be either of the following scales:
   1. 0 - 5
   2. 0 - 100
      
      
3. While a Grades-enabled Checklist is being populated with line items representing specific skills & competencies, admins will be required to specify an “Approval Threshold” for each Checklist item as part of the set up process in the Add/Edit Item modal.
   
   
   Edit Item modal. The “Approval Threshold” must be configured for every item in a Grades-enabled Checklist

• The grading scale on this menu will correspond with the admin’s previous Grade scale setting selection on the Checklist-level settings (i.e. 0-5, 0-100)
• Important! As a convenience, to help streamline the approval workflow on Grades-enabled Checklist, CourseKey will automatically approve or reject submissions for each item based on the approval threshold specified on this menu

4. Note: similar to other Checklist settings, Grades settings cannot be edited on a Checklist after it is published, so take care to ensure they are set up as desired up front, or consider running a test to familiarize yourself with the mechanics of the feature.
   
   
5. That’s it! Once Grades are enabled on a Checklist, both staff and students will see additional interaction points related to collecting/reviewing grades throughout the Checklists user interface - learn more below.
   
   

“Before we continue… what exactly does a grade mean in this context?”

• Grades-enabled Checklists will always require Staff to supply a grade for every item count, regardless of how many items are supplied as part of a single submission.
  
  
• For example:
  • Connie logged 6 item counts for Phlebotomy as part of 1 Checklist submission on May 25th
  • On the admin side, the Checklist submission will be split into 6 separate item counts to allow each one to be graded individually
    • CourseKey will assign each item count a Submission Group ID, which allows them to be grouped together in the student user interface (mobile) and within general Checklist reporting & exports.
  • CourseKey will require Staff to submit 6 individual grades with each of the 6 item counts supplied as part of the Checklist submission (1:1)
  • Each of the 6 item counts will be automatically assessed an Approval or Rejection based on the Approval Threshold specified for Phlebotomy
    • As with non-Grades Checklists, only Grades that result in Approved counts will increment student checklist progress 
  • Both Staff and Students will be able to see the individual grades in their respective user interfaces
  • In the event fractional counts are allowed on a Checklist, the system will split each submission such that every count contains at least 1 whole count
    • e.g. a submission containing count 2.75 will be split to “1” and “1.75”
      
      
• Note that with this release, there is currently no ability to customize the mechanics of how grades are applied beyond the grading scale and item approval thresholds.

Student Experience

1. With Grades enabled on a Checklist, there is no change to the submissions workflow for students that are using either the Student App or Mobile app
   
   
   As a student, the submission workflow will not change on Grades-enabled Checklists (left: Mobile App; right: Student Web)
   
   
2. There will of course be additional columns/fields that convey submission statuses and grades in appropriate areas of the the Student user interface on both Web and Mobile
   
   
3. Grades student experience on Web vs Mobile
   
   
   1. Given the system automatically splits multi-count submissions from 1:n, the submissions log on the Student Web user interface will always contain entries where amount = 1
      
      
      
      
   2. By contrast, on the Mobile app (where screen space is limited), the layout will be presented slightly differently:
      1. Submissions will continue to be grouped as they are on non-Graded Checklists, but students have the option to open each submission (via click) to view the individual grades associated with each count in the submission
      2. Also available within this nested view are Notes and Attachments
      3. If 0 items have been graded, the status of the main submission will read “Pending”
      4. Once 1 or more items are graded, the status of the main submission will convert to “n out of n Graded”
      5. Note: there are no breaking changes associated with this feature that will require a forced mobile update.
         
         
         
         Navigating around a Grades-enabled Checklist on the Mobile App

Inputting Grades as an Instructor or School Admin

Important reminder! As a convenience, to help streamline the approval workflow on Grades-enabled Checklist, CourseKey will automatically approve or reject submissions for each item based on the approval threshold for each item (specified during the Checklist setup process).

For example, given an approval threshold of 70, a grade of 80 will automatically approve the count, while a grade of 60 will automatically reject the count. 

When Grades is enabled on a Checklist, all corresponding areas of the Staff user interface for approving/rejecting submissions will be converted to collect grades:


Approval Queue - single grade input



Approval Queue - bulk grade input. In this case, the user interface will color-code the item names to give the Staff member a preview of what the approval (green) or rejection (red) outcome will be, based on their current grade input.

Add Count to Single Student (Instructors & Admins) - grade will apply to all counts, and note (when required/supplied) will also apply to all counts

Add Bulk Count to Multiple Students (Admins)

Records & Reporting via Exports or API

Within Skills Tracker / Checklist Exports, whether generated a Student’s Program-level or at a Checklist-level, grades columns will be included as long as the Grades feature is enabled on at least one Checklist in the Program:
A student’s Checklist-level export. Now contains columns: Grade, Submission Group ID, and Notes

Note: Rejection/Approval Notes will now always be included in all Skills Tracker / Checklist Submission Log exports, whether Grades is enabled or not.

For schools that leverage the Skills Tracker / Checklist API, both “Grade” and “Submission Group ID” are now included as part of the “GET Get Individual Rows“ API response. See also: CourseKey API Documentation