Extending Grading Periods

Whether a school had numerous snow days or the grading period ended prematurely, districts may be required to give students extensions or extra time to complete their coursework in Schoology. Since courses are associated with grading periods in Schoology, a course is automatically archived at the end of a grading period. This means the course is no longer displayed in the Courses list in order to make room for new courses, and students lose the ability to submit any remaining coursework.

Depending on how your organization provisions courses and enrollments, the following options may be available in order to grant students an extension:

System Administrators (System-Level)

• Extend the grading period by editing the start and end dates of the grading period
• Enable permission for students to access archived courses

Course Administrators (Course-Level)

• Add a new grading period to a course

Extending the Grading Period for My Organization (Enterprise only)

System administrators can adjust the grading period dates to extend the course life in their organization. Extending a grading period keeps the same course material and roster of students for a longer period of time.

System administrators can access grading periods from Grade Settings at the system level:

1. Click Tools.
2. Select School Management.

3. Click Grade Settings.
   
   

   

   • Editing the grading period in Grade Settings will affect all courses associated with that period. To extend the dates of a specific course, add an additional grading period at the course level.
   • If the grading period is already applied to active courses with graded material, do not delete the grading period. This will change all materials in all associated courses to Ungraded. Instead, edit the dates of the grading period.
   • Consider adjusting permissions such as View Upcoming Courses and View Archived Courses if you do not want to make changes to Schoology grading periods.
   • For organizations using SIS apps for grade passback, due dates should align with the grading period dates in the SIS.
   • Keep in mind that if you manually edit grading period dates in Schoology, they will no longer match with the grading period dates in your SIS.

To Edit a Grading Period:

1. Click the grading period or, click the gear icon and select Edit.
2. Adjust dates/names, as needed.

3. Click Save Changes to complete.
   
   

   

   Adjust the filter in Grade Settings to display grading periods that have already archived.

Enabling My Organization to Access Archived Courses (Enterprise only)

System administrators may wish to enable the View archived courses permission to give students the ability to submit work to courses that are associated with grading periods that have passed. Any role with this permission can view archived courses in the Archived area of My Courses indefinitely.

Seven days prior to the end of a grading period, a message is displayed at the top of the course with details regarding the approaching end date. After the end date of the grading period, courses are not archived until a 24 to 30-hour grace period has passed.

• No course content or enrollments will be lost during the archival process.
• Instructors can still enter grades in archived courses, however, depending on how your organization exports grades, they may not pass back to your SIS. The grades will pass back if the grading period is still open to accept grades in the SIS and the due dates fall within the grading period range in the SIS. For this reason, we recommend instructors reach out to their Support Contact if they need to enter grades when the grading period has passed.
• For students to view course assessment and managed assessment submissions in archived courses, the permission to view submissions must be enabled in the assessment settings.
• Archived courses are not accessible from the Schoology iOS or Android apps.
• Notifications and student completion rules are not supported in archived courses.

To Enable the View Archived Courses Permission:

1. Click Tools.
2. Select User Management.
3. Click Permissions.

4. Scroll down to the Availability category in the Courses section and select View archived courses for the desired role(s).
   
   

   

   Current courses are always available to users.

To View Archived Courses:

1. Click Courses.
2. Click My Courses.
3. From the My Courses area, click Archived to view past courses.

Managing My Course That is Ending Soon (Course-level)

If a course grading period is ending soon and you wish to extend it to allow students more time to submit work, add a grading period to extend the life of the course. This keeps the same course material and roster of students for a longer period of time. If the course is already archived, then you may also add a new grading period to reactivate it.

This process may vary based on how your organization provisions courses and enrollments. Instructors should check with their Support Contact before making any changes.

• Depending on how your organization provisions courses and enrollments, the option to add a grading period to a course may not be available to instructors. For example, if the course is synced with an SIS, additional grading periods cannot be manually added to the course. Instructors should contact their Support Contact with any questions.
• You should only extend the duration of the course by adding a grading period if the course is continuing with the same roster of students.

If you're the system administrator for the Enterprise version of Schoology, you can change the dates of the grading period. Changing the dates of the grading period affects all courses in your school or organization that are associated with the grading period.

To Add a Grading Period to a Course (Enterprise):

Enterprise instructors whose courses are not managed at the school or district level may add grading periods with the following steps:

1. Click Course Options.
2. Select Edit Info.
3. Select an active grading period.
4. Click Save to complete.

• Depending on the settings in place at your organization, the ability to add grading periods may not be available. Instructors can use the Support link to reach out to their Support Contact for help.
• If instructors need to edit or extend a grading period, reach out to the Support Contact for assistance.

To Add a Grading Period to a Course

You can add grading periods from the Grade Setup page in your course:

1. From the course.
2. Click Grade Setup in the menu.
3. Click Edit.
4. Fill in the information to Add New Grading Period.
5. Select the checkbox to apply the new grading period to the course.

If you need to adjust a grading period, create a new grading period with the adjusted grading period dates. You can use Bulk Edit in the gradebook to assign the new grading period to any existing course materials.

If you need to remove grading periods from a course, deselect the grading period from the Edit Grading Periods modal and click Save.