Vista Higher Learning Supersites 3.0 - Semester Transition Instructions
To help you prepare for the end of one academic term and the start of a new academic term (eg. Fall to Spring semester), we are providing these instructions for transitioning your vhlcentral courses.
These instructions contain the following items:
- An overview of how the transition process works, as well as what features are available or disabled for old courses.
- Instructions on wrapping up your old course, including steps you may take before and after the end date of the course.
- Details on setting up new courses and getting students to enroll in them.
Overview
Courses available in your vhlcentral program’s Dashboard are based on the Start Date and End Date you selected for each course.
When the end date of a course arrives, the course is then classified as an Old Course, and the following policies go into effect:
- You can access your old course from your Dashboard for 30 days. After 30 days have passed, use the Course/Section drop-down menu to access closed courses from "show older course."
- Your roster is locked; no new students can enroll in your roster.
- Students can access the program in their vhlcentral account to do any activity for practice, but their results will not appear in your gradebook.
- You can still manually assign grades to any instructor-graded questions and change the grades for any auto-graded questions.
- You can still post feedback comments for any question or activity that a student has completed.
- You can still run reports from your gradebook and export the results.
Wrapping Up Your Old Course
IMPORTANT: The most important thing to do before the end of the term is to be sure that you have set the correct value for the course end date. If a course end date is set for the end of the academic year instead of the end of the term, students will have trouble registering for next term's course, and other instructors will have trouble managing their rosters. You can set the correct course end date at any time by selecting "Edit Course" from the course’s action menu.
Before the Course End Date
You SHOULD NOT drop students from your roster or manually move them into a new course roster. After a course closes, students will be free to join a new course. Make sure that you have set Category weights and Category assignment settings to what you want their final values to be. When the course closes, you will not be able to make any changes to the course Category settings or any of the settings selected in the course Content step.
These include:
- Category Content, Grading, and Lateness settings.
- Lesson coverage, access level, and video support settings.
After the Course Closes
You can still work in your gradebook for closed courses, but you are limited to the following changes:
- You can focus on individual student work by clicking on a student's name.
- In the Grade column of the roster view, you can adjust student cumulative grades by clicking on the percentage grade.
- From the Category column(s) drop-down menu, you can select quick grade submissions or accept late work.
- You can modify student submissions, change an earned score, accept an overdue assignment, or adjust a late penalty.
- For any instructor-graded question, you can assign or change point values.
- For any question that was auto-graded, you can override the grade.
- You can post feedback comments for any question or any activity.
Setting Up Your New Course
You can set up your new course for the next semester at any time, even before the end date of your active course(s).
- Create a new course.
- Create course section(s).
- Assign work using the Assign menu tools or a course's section Assignment Wizard.
- After your course and section(s) are set up, students can begin enrolling in it. To help them, you may send enrollment instructions by selecting “Instructions for Students” from a sections' action menu.
Please refer to the following screencast links to help you set up your new course/section(s):
You can also download the vhlcentral Instructor Guide for more information.
Please remember that students currently enrolled in a course that hasn't yet closed, won't be able to enroll in a new course roster until the end date for the current course passes. They might be tempted to try to switch courses by dropping their old course and joining your new course, but this should be discouraged. (If they do this, they will disappear from the gradebook of the current course.)