Managing Continuing Courses

Some schools offer continuing courses that do not start or end during the established grade terms. They might continue from one term to the next (or one year to the next) before the teacher posts a final grade. A school's 'Active date enabled by' Grade preference determines how the active date – the start of the course for each student in the section – is set.

Note: To copy a course section's grades and assignments from one year to the next, first the district runs the End-of-Year Rollover wizard. Then, a school staff member must run the following two procedures:

  1. Run the Schedule Transcript Copy procedure (School view, Grades > Transcripts > Options menu), and enable the Copy student grades and assignments field.  
  2. Run the Continued Course Delete procedure (School view, Grades > Transcripts > Options menu). If you select the Preview mode, Aspen flags for review the records that are copied over to the next year. Then, run the procedure again to delete the copied records. (The procedure only deletes the records that have been copied.)

Active Date in the Teacher's Gradebook

An Active Date column appears on the Gradebook Scores page and on an assignment's details page.

Note: For the Active Date column to appear in the teacher's Gradebook, it must be associated with a transcript definition. A staff member must Prepare GradeInput and select Course at the Report type field.

A school's 'Active date enabled by' Grade preference determines how the active date – the start of the course for each student in the section – is set, and how the teacher sets it.

If the preference is set to... Then...
By first assignment mark only Aspen sets the student's active date when the teacher enters the first assignment score.
By multiple assignments The teacher indicates an active date using the Active Assignment field on an assignment's details page.
-If the teacher enables the Active Assignment field for only one assignment, the active date is set when the teacher enters a score for that assignment.
-If the teacher enables the Active Assignment field for more than one assignment, the active date is set once a score is entered for all of the flagged assignments.
-If the teacher does not select the Active Assignment checkbox for any assignment, Aspen sets the active date once any score is entered.
Disabled The teacher manually enters the active date in the Active Date column on the Scores page.