Apex Learning Teacher Manual

Transcription

1 Apex Learning Teacher Manual Student Account Management Teachers can enroll students in the courses they are teaching and reset passwords for those same students once they are enrolled in a course the teacher is teaching. If you cannot locate a student in the system, please Carmen Jimenez with the full name and birthdate of the student, and if possible, the student ID number from esis. Reset Password To reset a student password, begin by clicking the Students tab. Search for the student by beginning to type their last name in the Search box. Once the student is found, click Reset. This is a great time to watch out for missing student addresses and missing coaches for all the students. 1

2 After clicking Reset, you can see a new temporary password that has been assigned to the student, in this case decide1920. Adding Coaches In the example above, the students have had a coach assigned. You can tell by the check mark ( ) under the Coaches column. You can add more than one coach s here, and can even add the student s (sometimes a friendly reminder in their inbox that they haven t been logging in much is good). To add a coach, simple click the Edit link in the first column. From the popup window, type (or better yet, copy from paste Ctrl+C for copy and Ctrl+V for paste) and then click the Add button to save. Add as many addresses as you want, including the student s, the counselors 2

3 Wichita Standardized Courses Wichita Public Schools aligns the Apex courses with Kansas Curriculum Standards and USD259 Pacing Guides to better meet the needs of our mobile student population. Teachers are not to change the course outlines as this may cause students to start courses over if they move and result in loss of graduation credits. If you are a district teacher using Apex for your certified content area (including as a supplemental position in a program), you may participate in the annual Apex curriculum alignment. Additional Activities Besides the course outline, some additional activities have been added to many of the courses. These are always found in Appendix B and are a required part of the course for all students taking the course for high school credit. Many of the Additional Activities link out to a website where the actual lesson or resources is. For the social studies courses, if your building uses school-wide DBQs for specific social studies courses, you may exchange the ones listed in Apex for them. Do not simply disregard the DBQs however; they are a large portion of the student s course grade. Reports There is no reason to ever wonder how, when, and how much students are using their Apex courses and assessments. There is a wealth of information about how students are or are not using Apex in the reports section. To begin, choose the Reports tab. So, little Johnny might not have really spent 5 hours studying before taking his test? 3

4 This part will give course specific information, by student, as soon as you select an individual course to view. This part will give student specific information across all courses a student is taking. Clicking Student Progress after selecting a classroom gives a nice Stop Light Report of all the students in a class and can be an easy way to see who might be behind. Clicking the student s last name will open the Course Activity Scores Report. This is the report that can be printed to create a syllabus. 4

5 Click the Print button for a formatted printout. Printing to PDF (CutePDF is a free download) allows you to this report as a PDF attachment. Rather than printing, this report can be downloaded to Excel. You will need to answer yes to this dialog box to do so. The Excel download has additional information, including time spent on each assessment. Parent Report If you have added parents addresses as coaches, they have access to this information as well. Parents can be a valuable resource to you as you work to increase a student s positive academic behavior. The next page of this tutorial can be printed and sent home. It shows parents how to drill down in the Apex report they will be receiving via . 5

6 Checking Student Progress in Apex Ima Student Student, Ima Student, Ima imastudent You should recive the stoplight report each Monday. If you are not receiving it, please notify your child s teacher advisor so that they can get your address added to the system. Quality of Work: The average grade on work which has been completed. This is the grade that will be reported on your students gradecard. Grade to Date: The average grade on work which has been completed weighted for on schedule or late. This grade will not be reported, however, it might signal that your student should be spending more time working in this course to complete it in a timely manner. From your , click the Detail Report link (it is circled above) to get this detailed report of your student s online work. The calendar icon (circled) will allow you to view different weeks of activity. You can also use the dropdown menu to view different coures your student is enrolled in. Remember, the chart is graphing page hits divided between studying and taking tests. Session times are displayed under the bar graph and are particulary associated with the graph itself. Use the blue link numbers to scroll though all activities that should be completed for the week. 6

7 Student Progress After logging in as a teacher, click the Reports tab. Click the Student Summary button. Choose the student from the dropdown list. Ama Student d 7

8 From this window, you can see student s activity, progress, and list of overdue assignments as well as student s username. Ama Student Ama Student Use the calendar icon to change which week you are viewing in the student activity window. 8

9 The Gradebook By default Apex s gradebook opens to the course summary page, however, it always opens to the last place/unit you were looking at and this can sometimes be a bit disorientating when you switch to another course and were expecting to see the summary page. Most of the work you will do when logged into Apex will be work within the gradebook, so it is important that you understand everything that can be done here and what the Wichita expectations are for best practices in Apex. Clicking the student name will give you the same Course Activity Scores Report that is available via the Reports. To see individual activity scores, or to enter grades for practice and/or discussion items, use the dropdown menu to choose a unit to view. From the summary page you can quickly see how many overdue activities each student has. You can also see how many days it has been since they last accessed this course. In this way, you can quickly see which students are struggling and take action before they become over frustrated. If you have made sure your students have a valid address in the system, you can quickly click the envelope before their name and send them a quick note addressing any issues you see or to congratulate them on their fine work. The small i next to the student name allow you to enter additional information. You could make notes here about any conversations you have had with the student or parent regarding this class. You also MUST make a note here if you find it necessary to override a grade for a computer scored assessment in Apex. This is because the system will stamp the test score with your username, rather than the student s username and it will appear as though the student did not do the work. Reasons for hand entering a score might include giving credit for a misspelled word in open ended responses, or giving the student his or her high score as the final score on a test if it was not the last one taken. 9

10 From this screen, you can quickly see who reached mastery during their first assessment attempt, who reached mastery after two or more attempts, and those who have not reached mastery yet, and are locked out of the system. The double arrow symbol resets an assessment. The lock symbol locks for proctoring, or unlocks a test. The calendar lets you set due dates. The arrow lets you permit progress (opens the next lesson in the course) even though mastery has not been met. Double clicking the score opens up another window providing a wealth of information! 10

11 Let s take a look at a student who is locked out by double slicking on the score in a red box. Most students are meeting mastery before being locked out. This student is attempting to look answers up somewhere while taking the quiz. Double clicking a text date gives us specific information about the single assessment, including questions and answers given. Don t miss the Bloom Levels and Assessment Categories! 11

12 As you can see, there are not many secrets about student s academic behaviors in Apex. First, you must assess, is the student exposing him or herself to the curriculum before attempting assessment? If the answer is no, this problem should be addressed before other learning strategies are used. PLC would be a great time to work with your team regarding additional behavioral and academic interventions. Remember, Apex is like an electronic textbook students still need you! 12