Hi! The update from 12/14 has made it much more time consuming for me to work in the teacher Gradebook part of Buzz. It is quite a big deal for me --and other teachers at our school. But it is a bit difficult to explain, so, Buzz Help, please feel free to contact me. :)
Here is the situation: In Gradebook. Filtered by Start Date or Gradable Completion.
Now, I want to go in and exempt students from the Final Exams or Zero out assignments with a retry. I used to be able to click into the individual student and zero out or exempt, and the Buzz screen would STAY in the filter mode VIEW I had placed it in (with students organized by start date, etc). I could go through the kids and do what needed to be done pretty easily. But with today's update, every time I exempt one student from the test (or zero out and give a retry for each assignment), the grade book REVERTS back to the original view and I have to filter again (for start date or completion) after each entry. It makes it almost impossible to do what took me just a few minutes before this update.
Note: I cannot EXEMPT or zero out WITH A RETRY in "Quick Grades" . If I could, the problem would be alleviated that way. In fact, if you could provide both of those features in "Quick Grade" that would be even faster than what I was able to do before.
Note: At our school, we often have to go in and zero out kids for perhaps half the assignments if they are not finished by the end of the semester. But we have to make each retry-able in case they decide to extend the class and finish it. It would help so much to have a quick way of doing this.
Comments (8)
Also, when I want to look at a student in the gradebook and zero out numerous assignments (and give a retry), I used to just click from one assignment to the next for a particular student, but now, the Buzz gradebook resets each time I zero one assignment and I have to go back and find my place with that student again. Truly, this is such a big deal to me....you can't imagine how difficult and slow this makes my job now after this update. Please, please, could you put back the ability for the gradebook page to stay fixed while I click from assignment to assignment and zero or exempt?
Right now, I am trying to zero out a group of students for last week. Honestly, I can't really do it. I put a zero for one student. Gradebook resets. I go back find the student and add a retry. Gradebook resets. I organize back to start date to find the school group I am looking for. I go to one more student and zero. Gradebook resets. I go back and find student. Add a retry. Gradebook Resets.
Sigh. I've given up trying to do the zeroes. Maybe Buzz will fix this quickly?????
Agree. Having the grade book maintain the filtered view teachers choose while they work is very important for navigating and time management.
We are very sorry about this frustration! We are looking into ways to improve this behavior and hope to have more to share soon. Just to clarify a few things: filters should be maintained when grading students. The problem that we were able to confirm was that the sort was not maintained.
Also, I want to make sure that you know of the options for adding zeroes quickly. You can use the "quick-edit grading" or you can use the Activity Grader: Batch Update Scores feature. The Batch Update Scores tool lets you select multiple students or give a score to all students that match certain conditions.
Thank you for working on this fix!
If only I could give a zero WITH a RETRY, the "quick-edit" would be helpful, but since I never give zeroes without retries, it is not much use to me. But if you could add that feature it would be wonderful!
Hey Wendy, I created this animated image (GIF) showing how you can use the "Batch update scores" feature within Buzz. To learn more, see Activity Grader: Batch Update Scores. This tool can assign zeroes, allow retry, and excuse activities.
Thank you for showing me this, Brad. I guess this doesn't help me too much, because I don't usually grade all of one particular assignment at one time (since our kids are at all different places at any one time). I can see this would be helpful for a standard classroom, however. Now, if I could isolate one student and zero out all their uncompleted assignments AND make them open for retries all at once, that would be useful for me!
Yes, an option to fill across the gradebook for an individual student would be very helpful.