How to Copy Your Schoology Course Point Park Online staff will copy 8-week online (ON) courses; please copy ONLY your non-ON courses. This tutorial will walk you through the process of copying a course from one semester shell to another. Schoology doesn't offer a direct course-to-course copy, so you need to use Personal Resources as a place to store your course. N.B. If your gradebook contains a lot of external grades--items which are NOT submitted through Schoology--you will need to take extra steps to copy those columns to a new course. Documentation is forthcoming. Before you begin... There are a few things that don't survive the course copy process: Graded discussions: Discussions revert to ungraded; however, you can correct for this during the copy process. Unpublished state: Any unpublished items in the original course become published in the destination course. Folder colors: Folders revert to the default blue color. Due dates: Due dates from the original course are wiped out in the destination course. If this presents a problem for you, you may choose to copy a course folder-by-folder. This will retain published state and folder colors, but NOT due dates. Point Park Online thinks this is slightly more cumbersome, but it is an option.1 The process Point Park Online recommends for 99.7% of users follows. Step 1: Save the course to your Personal Resources. Go to the course that has the materials you want, and make sure you are in Materials. Click Options at the top of the page and choose Save Course to Resources. Accept the default settings. Click Submit. Step 2: Copy grade settings. While still in the course that has the materials you want, go to Grade Setup. Click the Copy Settings button at the top-right. Unless you have a compelling reason for why you should not copy all of your grade settings (categories, grading scales, and rubrics) and are prepared to defend your choice before a committee of exceptionally judgmental instructional designers, leave all three items checked. Tick the box next to the new/upcoming course (the one you're copying to). Click the Copy button. Step 3: Import the course in the new shell. Go to the course that needs your materials, and make sure you are in Materials. Click Add Materials and choose Import from Resources. This is important! Read the next sentence carefully or you will be crying in about five minutes! Click on the name (the text) next to your course folder to open it; you want to be able see all of the other folders and items inside your course. If you cannot see the different folders and other items of your course listed, then do not proceed; you must first click on the name of your course folder so you can see its contents. Tick the box at the top of the list to select everything. Click Import. Optional but recommended if you have graded items, especially discussions: Click the Advanced Options link and modify settings (enable grading, points possible, due date, category, and grading scale) as appropriate. For discussions, grading is disabled by default; it's easier to enable grading here rather than after they are already in the course. You can edit all of these options in the bulk editor after everything is imported EXCEPT discussions. So, if you use graded discussions, it is recommended that you enable grading for them here. Click Import. Fun Facts If you don't change anything in the new/upcoming course, you don't have to go through the Save to Resources process again. The course content still exists in your Personal Resources. The next time you teach the course, just go through the import process again. You might find it helpful to edit the name of the course folder in your Personal Resources. For example, you might want to indicate the semester and year the course is from. If you want to use something from one course in another course of yours, you can still use the import feature. Just go to the place you want the item to appear > Add Materials > Import from Resources, and then navigate to and select JUST the item(s) you want to import. If you have a rubric that you want to use in multiple courses, you can save it to your Personal Resources and then import it into your other classes. Just go to the course with the rubric > Grade Setup and click Rubrics on the right side. Click the gear icon next to the rubric you want to save and choose Save to Resources. To import the rubric to another course, go to its Materials section > Import from Resources and browse your personal resources for it. You can organize your Personal Resources as you see fit. For example, you can create a folder to store your rubrics, or one to hold your question banks, etc. If you teach multiple sections of the same course in the same term, Schoology makes it really easy to link the sections. That means that you only need to manage one set of materials for all sections, and you'll just switch from section to section as needed for grading, messaging, etc. You can also create section-specific settings for the same material. For example, you can make the same quiz available to your M/W section on Wednesday, but not until Thursday for your T/Th section. For now, you'll have to request this. To copy a course folder-by-folder: For each folder, click the gear icon to the right and choose Copy to Courses. Select the destination course in the window that pops up. ↩

To send a message to all students in your class: Go to the class. Click the Course Options drop-down menu below the course graphic. Select Send Message.

By default, students cannot see what questions they got right or wrong on a test. To let students review their test results: Go to where the test lives in the course. Click on the test name to open it up. Click on the Settings tab. Towards the bottom, set View Submissions to Yes, or Yes with correct answers if you also want to reveal the correct answers.

You can set up test exceptions for students who need extra time to complete a test in Schoology. To do this, you need to set up two tests.   Set up the test the way you want it in the course. Excuse the student(s) who need extra time from this test (use the flag icon in the appropriate cell in the gradebook). Save the test to your Resources area (gear icon > Save to Resources).  Import the test back to your course (Add Materials > Import from resources). On this copy of the test, set up the parameters to account for the extra time, or make it untimed. Assign the copy of the test to the individual student(s) who need more time. You do that via the triangle/3 dots when you edit the quiz—Individually Assign. You can type the name(s) of the student(s) and it will auto-complete. None of the other students will get this test, so you don’t have to excuse them.

You can find out when a student last accessed your course through the Analytics page of your course. Go to your course in Schoology. Click Analytics in the left-hand navigation menu. Click the User tab. Note that there are two columns with last access information: Last logged in and Last course access. Last logged in: The last time the student logged in to Schoology. Last course access: The last time the student accessed your course. See this Schoology support page for more information on course analytics.

The end-of-course surveys do not live in Schoology, but you can access them through the CoursEval portal page in Schoology. Click the icon for the App Center (the four squares) in the top navigation bar. Click CoursEval. View your current surveys and results, if available. To view surveys from previous terms, click the link to View past reports in the My Reports section. For problems or questions about course evaluation surveys, please contact Emily Conrad, Director of Academic Affairs, 412.392.3941.

Make sure your assignment has a grading category or it won't appear in the gradebook. You can select the grading category or create a new one when you are creating or editing the assignment. You can also create grading categories under Grade Setup in the left-hand course navigation. Disable comments. Students often believe they type their assignment submission in the comments area, especially for journal assignments. Avoid the confusion by disabling comments for the assignment. Assign a due date. This will add the assignment to the course calendar and students will see it in the "Upcoming" section in Schoology. Due dates will also aid in sorting your gradebook chronologically. Disable submissions or lock the assignment rather than unpublishing it. When you unpublish an assignment it disappears from the gradebook and is no longer included in grade calculations. If you don't want students to be able to submit work before or after a certain date, either disable submissions or lock the assignment. The latter allows you to lock the assignment on a specific date, so if you don't want to accept late work, that's your best bet. Never tick the box to make the assignment a midterm or final, even if it is a midterm or final. This setting is for K-12 schools with multiple grading periods for the same class.

You can add Open Educational Resources (OER) from OER Commons to your Schoology course. Requirements You must have an OER Commons account - register or sign in. You must have OER Commons content saved either to your profile or the Point Park University group. See the OER Commons Help Center for more information on finding and saving content. Step-by-step instructions In your course, Add Materials > Add File/Link/External Tool > External Tool Tool Provider: OER Commons Title: Type in the name of the content you're adding Submit. You'll be returned to where you were when you clicked Add Materials. Click the item you just created. If this is your first time using the OER Commons external tool, you'll be prompted to log in to your OER Commons account; otherwise, you'll see your saved items. Click the Select button next to the item you'd like to insert. You'll get the message, Your current activity has ended. The page doesn't refresh automatically, so to view the content, you either have to refresh the page or go back to where the item lives in your course and click it again. You only have to do this right after adding the item--in the future, you (and students) will just click the link.