Courses in Syllabird
A course is a collection of lessons or assignments in a certain schedule. A course appears on the calendar if it has assignments and an enrolled student.
This means you can reuse the same course at any time - for example, when your younger students are ready for it. Or, you can enroll multiple students in a course at the same time. Enrolling a student in a course is like pulling a book off of a bookshelf.
Course Duration
A course in Syllabird doesn't have a set start and end date until you enroll a student in it. Until then, it's just a collection of assignments laid out in a certain structure. A course starts at whatever time you pick when you enroll a student in it, and the end date will depend on the duration of the course. A course usually lasts about 32 weeks, but can be up to 52 weeks long.
Assignment Frequency
Courses often have 5 assignment-days per week - Monday through Friday. Meaning there are 5 days each week that the course has assignments or lessons. In Syllabird, courses can have anywhere between 1 and 7 assignment/lesson-days per week. This assignment frequency, along with the course duration (how many weeks the course lasts) determine the total number of assignment-days in a course.
It's only when you enroll a student in a course that you pick which days of the week the course will have assignments. For example, if your course has 2 assignment-days per week, you could pick Monday & Wednesday one year, but pick Thursday & Friday the next year for a different student.
Subjects
You can create any subject you need, and a course can have any number of subjects. To create a new subject, you can type directly in the subject input and click "create".
Grade Years
Grade years can be from Preschool to 12th grade, including Pre-K and Kindergarten. A course can be for any number of grade years, for example 7th and 8th grade.
Default Days
Keep in mind, it's only when you enroll a student in a course that you pick which days of the week the course will have assignments. However, you can give a course default days of the week which will be populated by default when enrolling a student in the course.
Graded Courses
If you mark a course as graded, Syllabird will automatically calculate a grade for students enrolled in the course. Courses can be either "Point Graded" or "Percent Graded". You can still have ungraded assignments in graded courses and vice versa.
- Point Graded: Each assignment is worth some number of points, and students receive some number of points. For example 9/10 or 23/25.
- Percent Graded: Each assignment is graded on a percent basis. For example 95% or 100%.
Graded courses also have Credits, which are used to calculate a cumulative GPA for transcripts.
Assignment Types
You can also select the weights for different types of assignments. For example, you can set quizzes to be worth 25% of a course, and tests to be worth 50%, etc.
Key Points
- A course is a collection of assignments.
- Only courses with assignments and an enrollee appear in the calendar.
- You can reuse a course many times, for example for future students.
- You can add or remove assignments to a course at any time.