Teacher

Manage:

1. Course thumbnail and Color
   • Recommended thumbnail file type: PNG or JPG (Buzz converts all files into PNGs).
   • Ideal thumbnail size: 400px x 400px (Buzz automatically resizes images, so uploading images smaller than 400px x 400px may reduce quality).
2. Course title
3. Term (this filed is titled School year if your domain has domain-level Grading Periods set up).
4. Start and End dates
5. Whether it's a Continuous course (if so, specify the number of Days the course should run for).
6. Whether to Use agendas in this course.
7. 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).

Manage:

1. The minimum Passing Score, which is the minimum percentage a student must earn in order 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, Buzz 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.

To set up Multi-Outcome Scoring:

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

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

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.

Manage:

• 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 Buzz to assess mastery.
  • The overall Minimum score (%) a student can earn on those questions before receiving remediation activity suggestions.

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

Manage the following options:

• Allow students to see comparative class statistics in their 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.
• Automatically mark past-due activities as missing (after being enabled, this setting can take up to 24 hours to be applied to all relevant activities)
  • When activities are marked as missing, a missing icon appears with the activity in multiple locations.
  • The activity is marked as missing when the due date passes even if students are allowed late submissions.
  • Automatic indicators are removed if the Due date is updated so the activity is no longer past-due, or if the setting is disabled.
• Automatically allow retries for below-passing activities
  • Formative and Remediation assessments are excluded from this setting.
  • Automatic retries are granted until the due date or grace period has passed and overide 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(s) first and last names appear in various places the student Grades tool.)
• Students must complete each activity in order (using the order in the Editor > Syllabus)
• If predictive grading with BusyBee's Grading Assistant is enabled for your domain, a Disable BusyBee grading assistant in this course is displayed.

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.
  • 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, 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

Easily create branded Assessment themes that you can apply to any assessment in your course.

Create and manage Badges.

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

Set up Completion badges. that you want automatically awarded to students when they finish this course.

1. Click Choose badge.
2. Check the boxes next to each badge you want awarded.
   • Note: You can create new badges above.
3. Click Done.

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 manages ways in which course completion can be triggered for individual enrollments. The automatic options are particularly useful for continuous enrollment courses because learners can move at their own pace.

Options include:

• Manual completion; where the teacher marks completion.
• Automatic when all activities are complete. When Buzz 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. When Buzz 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 activities in these categories are complete; to use this option, specify the desired category(s) from the dropdown. When Buzz 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.

LTI specification establishes a way to integrate external learning applications, like Turnitin and ALEKS, with Buzz.

Publisher options are meant to help manage Base and Derivative courses and your full curriculum.

Learn more: How do I create and manage Base and Derivative courses?

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

• Enable student tasks
• Enable submissions of student tasks

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