Keeping DLA’s and parents informed is super time consuming when you’re stuck with using the phone. This tutorial shows you how to save loads of time by sending out informal progress reports to the student, dla, and parent directly from the grade book. The tutorial is about 8 minutes long, but if you spend the time to go over it, you’ll save hours and hours next semester. Please leave comments on the blog and tell others -help us all become the best possible online teachers and developers we can be.
Shu
Note: apparently informing DLA’s and parents on how their kids are doing with specific grade information is a ferpa violation -according to our legal system, the only way to send grades is in a password protected excel sheet. (Yeah right, we all have time to do THAT twice every week!) Here’s the best way to handle this hiccup: It’s ok to tell the dla and parent that the student needs to catch up -just not the student’s actual grade. Send an introduction email to all of your dla’s and parents early in the semester, and let them know that when your email includes a sentence like ‘please catch up’ at the top, that’s ‘code.’ Also, and I’ll write a blog article on this later, make this your number 1 ground rule in class: Students should meet with a parent or dla at least once every week to go over the assignment schedule and the ‘my grades’ button. Having someone to report to will keep them from falling behind.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Note: I’ve had a couple of people ask me why I said it’s so important that we put the kid’s name in the subject line. The reason is two-fold.
First, by putting the name in the subject line, you can keep from having to change the pasted email more than you have to.
Second, when you’re using Thunderbird to check your ncmail account, you can search the subject lines for a student’s name. When you do that search, you have instant documentation should you need it. That documentation instantly shows every email you’ve sent all semester long to the student and dla… super handy!
-shu
May 9th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Good stuff, Shu! Thanks for sharing this. I do something similar with texter @ the beginning of each semester – this way I can not only fire off a student’s parent/dla, but also formulate a generic message that can be customized with a few key words. (http://tinyurl.com/texterdownload)
May 10th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Hey Mike -
I just watched your time saving blog -great information. The only concern I have is that grades that are sent through messages have to be sent in a password protected email.
How are you incorporating this?
Thanks!
Deb
May 10th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Hmmmm… Good question. Thanks for the reminder. Sending a quick update to keep everyone informed of student progress is really important for student success, as I’m sure you can see. The method I covered in my blog is the fastest and easiest way to do that. I think keeping it fast and easy is going to make people more likely to do it at all.
Is there a way we can maybe leave out the average and just say “passing” or “not passing” to keep it kosher. I just want to show people how to get good results, and I think my shortcut will help achieve good results. What do you think?
Shu
May 10th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
I agree – quick, easy and informed is a great way to go. Yes – I think if you don’t insert specific grades you will be fine. Concerned parents will usually call and you can give them more specifics over the phone.
Have you tested your method out this semester or is this something you have just started? I would be interested in knowing if your pass rates increase using this strategy.
I do think this is a great method to have all of the information in one easily accessible place. I wonder if, since this information is already on the initial roster, this could be done by technology – changing the fields to include DLA information and Parent email addresses if given. I will check on that.
Thanks! Deb
May 10th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Nice thinking! I think if we utilized these fields from the beginning, we’d encourage getting that information to parents, students, and dla’s in a fast and easy way from the top down, and we’d see great results.
I’m not just starting this method recently; I’ve been using it since August (but not consistently every week like I’d like to) and my DLA’s, for the most part, love it. My success rate is high, on average, but it’s hard to always look at that number alone. Sometimes we get a tough batch of kids in a class or a dla who doesn’t really know what to do with the information when I send it. In those cases, I just have to do a little more work to get the kid on board -but there are few of those cases, and the method still saves tons of time. Overall, this is a solid way to get “on average” better results, but there are exceptions that will call for the above and beyond -luckily, we’ll have more time to tackle those though! If folks would watch the tutorial and follow this method (or one similar that saves time when making contacts) next semester along with the google calendar pacing guide, I’m 100% certain we’d see across the board performance increases. The pacing guide is important because we have to send emails out before the end of the units letting folks know if students are behind.
Thanks for the insight,
Shu
May 10th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Jen,
Thanks for the post! I’m checking out Texter now, and I just wanted to say that I love Lifehacker and definitely follow them on Google Reader. After looking at it, I think I’m going to add a blog post about Texter. Thanks! I’ll just link the current youtube video tutorial. Nice find Jen!
Shu
May 10th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Where are you from? Is it a secret?
Thank you
Dirnov
May 10th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I’m from Raleigh, and you can tell more about who I am and who I work with by reading my bio to the right. Thanks for asking,
Shu
January 31st, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Beginning today I just applied this to my courses. excellent
January 31st, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Glad you liked that one Jose! Can you think of anything else that you’d like to see me cover?
February 1st, 2010 at 5:57 pm
Yes, and I called the help desk today(no help). I included in one of my courses that chat screen that you mentioned on your page. The problem is that the chat screen takes a lot of space, so the students do not see the announcements that we put there. One thing I would like to know is how we make this announcement smaller, permanent and that is always on top without modifying it. One other thing that would be great for me to learn is how I make my discussions in class orally without using a voice board or group voice board. Thanks
February 1st, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Jose,
You can make your announcements permanent by clicking the ‘permanent’ option when writing the announcements. I actually had to get rid of the embedded chat announcement in my class because it was too anonymous and because it was blocked at almost all of the schools in NC. It’s a great idea though -to have a live chat embedded in the announcements. You can change the size of any embedded item by searching in the html (ctrl+f) for the words height and width. Playing with those will help you resize embedded items!
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Genesis! I love finding ways to be more efficient. You know, too, you could make those pre-written paragraphs in texter and then you wouldn’t have to copy and paste out of notepad. I am applying this to my class right now!
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Glad to hear it! It works great for me, although here’s a great tip for emailing: when you’re in gmail, you have threaded accounts… sometimes your emails can get lost in the back of the inbox. In your search bar at the top of the screen, type the following
label:unread
hit search, and you’re good to go. You can basically isolate just your unread email! Also, you can use a labs setting called ‘quick links’ to add a permanent button to your screen that will automatically do this. I’ll post more on it in my next blog post!
shu
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:26 am
We use the Early Warning System (with another online school) and the e-mails are already in the Blackboard system so all we do is one click e-mailing parents / schools. I know there is a way to get those e-mails in the system so we don’t even have to do the copy and paste. Any idea how we get this in somewhere at that level?
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:01 pm
EXCELLENT! This will certainly be a time saver from ALL those phone calls. Don’t get me wrong – I think SOME students greatly benefit from that personal contact – but there are those parents and DLAs who would much rather read an email than return a phone call. Is there an easy way you go about securing everyone’s CORRECT email address? there are several ofmy students for whom the email field is “null”.
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:08 pm
I spend A LOT of time getting that information, and many of my students’ parents just don’t have email addresses. Basically, I download my roster from the registration system, edit the columns so it only shows the info I need, and then start working on getting dla’s and students to provide the info I need. One way that I haven’t tried yet is to include a google form embedded in the announcements asking for contact information -not sure about ferpa with this approach, but if it’s legal to email contact information, this should be ok so long as you don’t share the document.
The best approach is to make your number one ground rule in class this:
Ground Rule 1:
Meet with a parent at least once every week at an agreed upon time to review the course schedule and your ‘my grades’ button. This is very important, and I’ll be asking parents if you’re meeting when I call you periodically this semester. You can do this!
-shu
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:37 pm
What a wonderful way to save time.Thank ou Mike. I ask my students to create the homeapge in our BB. I ask for email and phone numbers. I can view those by going to the roster in course tools. Some of our data do not have school names, nor lda or phone numbers. I have 3 students with no information at all. DG
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Oops. Correction on my name.
February 3rd, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Thank you so much for this helpful quickie Shu… there seems to always be something to learn on BB, and I am loving the new texter site, written about by another poster.
Concerning the FERPA issue.. What if at the beginning of the semester we had parents electronically sign a “permission”/”waiver” type document allowing us to email their child’s grade? Does that seem sound and legal? My previous email language before I learned more about FERPA used to be “your child’s current grade is below passing”. I do hope the idea of having the parents give permission to receive updates electronically is an option
) Look forward to hearing what you think! ~Elizabeth
February 3rd, 2010 at 4:53 pm
unfortunately, it’s not going to be legal to get that kind of permission from parents, although it would be difficult to bring action against you after they’ve signed permission! I think the best thing to do is to change the language a bit… maybe something like ‘needs to get that grade up right away. I want students to be able to continue and graduate on time!” That pretty much says ‘he’s not passing’ without actually saying it. This came specifically from Dr. Weeks, or I’d say we have wiggle room. Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to indicate passing or failing on emails to parents or dla’s -no grade information. Sorry to bring the bad news; it was a surprise for me too! I thought it was ok to communicate progress but not ok to send final grades… apparently this is not the case.
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Those are definitely some good phrasing choices. Maybe you can put up a list of suggested ways to imply a student needs to work harder when we are really trying to say that they could fail. Aha! I remember I do also sometimes say that a student currently has a “low score” due to non-submittal of assignments/projects and/or low scores on Quizzes/Exams. Are those allowed?
) I just know that before I started learning about FERPA last year that the parents I had contacted via email about the “non-passing” grade really appreciated it and spoke with the kids right away..what a difference it made 
) I just wish the parents could have a say in whether or not they receive email updates. Until then let’s get started with that list:
1. “needs to get that grade up right away. I want students to be able to continue and graduate on time!” -Shu
2. “needs to catch up”-Shu
3. “is currently off-schedule” -moi
4. “has not yet submitted assignments due this week/last week”-moi
5. “is (time period) 1 week/2 weeks behind on their calendar of assignments”-moi
6. “has some low scores and we would like to see him/her improve, what can I do to help”-moi
7…..anyone, anyone,-Economics teacher-Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Those are great Liz! I wonder if anyone would have a problem with it if we gave them the news that their kid was ‘acing’ the class, implying a grade of A? I like this entry because it allows us to give feedback to everyone very quickly -good and bad! Using a few pre-typed responses, you can run through all of your students in just a few minutes.
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Well as long as you are only implying the A, and not really stating it, lol
and oui, oui, please add more, anyone! I love texter and copy and paste, especially when you are sending out multiple classes of emails 
) thanks for having this forum!