Understanding Results in Activity Management

With Activity Management you greatly enhance the grading capabilities available at the course level. Each activity can have multiple results allowing you to capture marks, grades, and outcomes for which you record a primary result up the course hierarchical content tree. This gives you the opportunity to capture additional result types, such as competency and midterm results.

A number of components are used to set up, control access to, enter, and calculate results. The two essential setup components are the Result Scale where you map any combination of scores, marks, grades and outcomes; and Result Types, where you define which outcomes to track. At least one result type must exist in Activity Management and be associated with the Academic Institution as the primary result. This is the result that is calculated up the content tree and is stored as the official result of the course. This result is calculated using the delivered primary course result rule. To calculate results you must utilize the Mark value in your result scale setup.

Additional grading criteria are defined in the Activity Registry for specific coursework items. General content items such as the weight of the item, the result scale, the mandatory pass flag — as well as late penalty criteria, assignment due dates, and extra credit — are defined in the Registry and have a significant impact on grading. The delivered AM Primary Course Result and the AM Late Penalty rules use the registry criteria in calculating the primary result for the overall course utilizing the institution’s result scale setup.

Activity Management caters to three consumers – administrative staff, instructional staff, and students. Each group has unique needs and times in which to access result data. Four primary components exist to cater to these groups. Administrative users access the Result Roster secured by academic organization and have full grading and calculating capabilities. These users also have access to student results in the IAM.

Instructional users, including both faculty and exam staff, have access to the Result Roster through the AMWC. Instructional user access and capabilities are defined on several levels:

1. User must be associated with an Academic Organization on the Instructor/Advisor Table.

2. User must be assigned as an instructor on the Class Table or as exam staff in the Section Manager.

3. Define result access Result Dates to indicate when instructional staff can access result rosters to perform specific actions. Result access – to view, grade, calculate – is based on the roster access settings on the Class Table and Section Manager (see tables below).

4. Set Allow Calculation flag on the Institution Table.

5. Review Updateable Inclusions on the Activity Manager WorkCenter (AMWC) Settings tab of the Activity Registry component to define which coursework detail can be updated by instructional staff in the AMWC.

Result roster access in the AMWC is based on the roster access defined for Instructors on the Meeting page of the Schedule of Classes or assigned staff on the Section Details page of the Section Manager. Transactional access to the AMWC Result Roster includes the actions to view, grade, and calculate. The following example illustrates how class instructor and exam staff access translates to AMWC actions.

Because instructors are assigned at the class level (component in the Activity Management structure) the instructor assigned to the graded component will have access to all noncomponent result rosters, meaning that instructor can view and calculate the rosters for the course root, all noncomponent children of the course root, and the exams and exam sections. This provides the instructor of the graded component with the ability to calculate the course primary result.

Because exam staff are assigned at the exam section level, roster access to the parent exam (and course root if it is an exam only course), is provided to exam staff with the maximum access that user is provided at the exam section. For instance, if an exam staffer has view access for one exam section and grade access for another exam section, the staffer will have grade access at the parent exam.

For students you must define when to display results. Define this on the Result Dates component for student self service. Activities must also be set up to be viewable in self service. This is a definable content option on all activities within the Activity Manager and its related components.

Results calculated in Activity Management are designed to post to a student’s enrollment record (STDNT_ENRL) and the student’s Academic Progress Tracker (APT). You define which results to post on the Institution Table and then run the IAM Result Posting batch process to sync results to the APT and the course grade to the graded component official grade on STDNT_ENRL.