Making Changes to Course and Item Settings

This guide explains how to update course-level and lesson-level settings, including grading behavior, pacing, assessment options, and completion rules.

Accessing Course Settings

• Navigate to Your Teaching
• Select the course you want to modify
• Click Course Setup
• Click to open the Course Editor in a new tab
• Click Course Settings (wrench icon in upper right) within the editor

Course settings control how the course behaves for all enrolled students.

Course Type

• Continuous Course
  • Students are enrolled at different times and have different start and end dates. Enrollment end date is set out the number of days set in the "Days" field
• Range Course
  • All students follow the same schedule (common in asynchronous settings)
  • Students have the same enrollment end date no matter when their first day of enrollment is.

Course Length (Days)

Defines how long the course runs:

• ~90 days = Semester course
• ~180 days = Full-year course

• When enabled, missing assignments are automatically scored as zero after the pace/due date
  • Both Continuous and Range courses will auto pace items, however, Range courses require a set (not paced) due date on each item in order for it to receive an auto zero.
• The additional setting to Mark activities complete when minimum score is auto-assigned can be enabled or disabled.

Use with caution:

This setting can significantly impact student grades.

• Students must meet each items completion setting to move on to the next.
• Prevents access to future content until prior work is completed

*Automatically mark past-due activities as missing should not be used in conjunction with Auto Assign Minimum Score (Zeros).

*Remember to save changes in the upper right after adjusting course settings.

Item settings allow you to customize behavior at the Item (activity) or assessment level.

*Note: changes to items affect all students enrolled in the course unless groups are used. See this article for creating groups/adjusting group settings.

Access Item Settings

• From the Course Editor, click on the pencil icon to the right of the item.
  • Note: You may need to expand folders to see the items within it.
• Click the Settings tab

• Number of Attempts
  • Controls how many times a student can attempt an assessment before needing a retry allowed
• Questions Per Page
  • Display one question at a time or multiple questions per page
• Allow Save and Continue
  • Lets students exit and return to an assessment without losing progress
• Randomization Options
  • Randomize question order - tests pull questions from the question bank in a random order
  • Randomize response order - available choices are randomized

Assessment Review

• Controls whether students can review completed assessments
  • Default is Review Score, Own Answers (Always, Always, Always, Always, Never, Never)
    • This setting will not show students the correct answer or publisher feedback which may contain the correct answer
    • See this article for more information on review settings options

Assessment Pool Settings

• Change the desired number of questions pulled from the question bank when a student starts an assessment.
  • Defaults in S-Catalog courses
    • Lessons - 10 Questions
    • Quizzes - 15 questions
    • Unit Tests - 27 Questions
    • Exams - 50 Questions

Advanced Assessment Options

• Time limit
  • Set a time restriction (default is no time limit)
• Allow Printing
  • Allows students to print assessments.
• Scored Attempt
  • Determines which score appears in the gradebook:
    • First attempt
    • Highest score (default)
    • Average score
• Assessment Password
  • Required each time the student starts or continues the assessment
    • *"Locked" item can be used in place of Assessment Password if desired. Locked items require teacher to hide or excuse before student can access assessment.

Advanced Gradebook Options

• Require a passing score for course credit
  • Students must meet a minimum score to receive credit
    • If not met, overall grade may default to 0% (F)
• Treat as zero in gradebook until this activity is scored
  • Displays a zero in the gradebook until the item is graded

Advanced Activity Options

• Mark Complete (Mark as complete when the student)
  • Submits (default) - Items marked complete once submitted
  • Receives a passing score - Items marked complete only when passing score has been reached
    • *Note: Submission box items will need to be graded before their score can be referenced against the passing score set (Passing score set in Advance Gradebook Options)
  • Receives any score
  • Views the activity for a set time
    • This setting is only available on non-graded items
• Student must complete this activity before continuing to the next one (checkbox)
  • Prevents students from advancing until requirements are met
    • This item setting does not need to be enabled if the course setting to require students to complete items in order is enabled.

Best Practices

• Review course settings before the term begins
• Use automatic zeros carefully to avoid unintended grade impacts
• Adjust attempt settings based on assessment goals
• Verify passing score requirements before finalizing grades
• Use gating strategically to control student progression