Keeping track of the volume of homework, especially recorded homework, is a huge challenge. Teachers are usually paid by the hour and prefer not to spend their time grading homework, so this task typically falls to office managers or assistants. The workload of accepting, grading, and returning homework from different classes to their respective students in a timely manner can be messy and overwhelming, particularly when there are many students and few staff. Often, office managers are responsible for other aspects of the business, such as communicating with parents, promoting classes, and assisting students with their work. They are simply spread too thin, and this pressure often leads to frustration and workplace dissatisfaction.
Any homework assigned will be the student's obligation to complete. We have tools to encourage timely submission and quality work.
We have highly effective tools for oversight help to incentivize students to get their homework in on time and put in their best effort. For example, late submissions incur an automatic grade deduction, and this is reflected in the student's personal grade report, which is then reflected in the 90 day average, all of which are visible to guardian accounts. Assignments expire after 3 weeks past the due date, resulting in an automatic zero, giving students who delayed submitting their work additional motivation get in their assignment despite the initial loss of points. Student report cards will include a comprehensive list of all assignment grades and submission statuses, which will be accessible to the student, any guardians of the student, and faculty. Additionally, teachers and admins have permissions to modify due dates or exempt specific students from assignments. Customizable cut-off dates for late submissions and expiration dates along with customizable percentage deductions are planned for future development.
Grade or pass physically handed in homework instantly
In Ulearn, assignments can be accessed through multiple pathways, catering to various scenarios. Consider a teacher grading homework for a specific date and class. The most logical approach would be to navigate to the class instance and then assess assignments on a comprehensive view displaying all responsible students.
However, imagine a student unexpectedly arriving at school to submit an assignment in person. In this case, the previously mentioned method would prove cumbersome. A more efficient route would involve querying the student's profile and accessing their homework directly. This action reveals a page showcasing all of the student's pending assignments, with the recently submitted work likely appearing near the top.
Upon locating the assignment, administrators and teachers can effortlessly mark physically submitted homework with a single click, automatically assigning a default grade of 100%, or input a specific score. It's worth noting that while Ulearn adeptly handles physical submissions, most students tend to prefer online submission methods.
For a detailed explanation of how online homework submissions are evaluated, please refer to the subsequent slide.
While parents expect cram schools to drive student performance, teachers lack effective tools to do so without disciplinary options and parental involvement. This challenge is compounded by cram school grades not affecting regular school performance, so many students simply disregard cram school teachers and the homework they assign. Students are simply immune from any consequences, and they know it! An efficient teacher-to-parent grade-reporting system may give kids the 'nudge' they need.
An entire section dedicated to grading, presented with as a list of homework that gets shorter as assignments are graded and removed from the list.
In this area of the program, administrators are presented with a consolidated list of all online submitted assignments across the school, while teachers view submissions only from their own classes. Both admins and teachers can then follow up with submissions by: passing with an automatic 100%, manually inputting a grade, or rejecting for resubmission. Upon rejection, the student will be prompted for resubmission. As assignments are processed, they vanish from the submission manager list, making it shorter and shorter. An empty list indicates all submissions have been handled, requiring no further action until new assignments are submitted.
Either administrators or teachers can grade online submissions or mark physical submissions as complete, removing the task from everyone's list to prevent duplicate efforts. This collaborative "organic delegation" approach contrasts with traditional single-person grading, distributing workload and significantly reducing grading time. This approach is also seen in other parts of the program, further enhancing overall efficiency.
When this menu is displayed in class, each students will see which of their homework is overdue at a glance, and the teacher can immediately check off assignments as students hand them in.
This one of a kind menu, when displayed in class, offers a consolidated view of all overdue homework for each student in that class, making it more efficient for teachers to check and remind students in that particular class of their obligations, showing students any pending work and allowing immediate checking off of assignments as they are handed in. Completed tasks vanish from the list, then when the page refreshes, remaining outstanding work is shown, and individual student grade reports update automatically.
This list also displays overdue homework from other classes within the same school, for students who are not only enrolled in the current class. This allows for multiple faculty members to nudge students to turn in their assignments.
The constantly updated report card is loaded with information about student performance, accessible by faculty, students, and student guardians.
Once an assignment is graded, the student's report card is updated. Students can access this report, which displays individual assignment grades, an automatically calculated overall grade, and teacher feedback. Unlike traditional semester-end reports, this remains continuously updated. Students can directly re-upload rejected assignments through this interface, which is also accessible to faculty and linked parent accounts, giving parents an up-to-date view of their child's academic standing.
Access is role-restricted: parents view only their children's grades, teachers see grades for students in their own classes, and administrators only have access to grades for students within their school. Color coding and sorting features enhance clarity and usability. Weighted grades will be implemented in a future update.
For recorded homework assignments, teachers or administrators do not need to download the recording file locally and listen to it using a third party app or software. Recordings can be directly played in-app, then graded. Once a recording has been paused, a few grading functionalities will be activated for that particular recording. The teacher will see a button used to reject the file, a manual grading field to input a grade, a comment field, and a pass fied to give it an automatic 100% and clear it from the follow-up homework list. We will continue to add more useful features to this, such as voice to text conversion, and automatic grading functionalities with the integration of AI so that manually listening to recorded homework may no longer be necessary.