My Graduation (My Learning) Tab for Students
The My Graduation (aka My Learning) tab on the student home page offers students a chance to see their present and past progress through sets of courses and pathways.
This tool creates complete transparency for all stakeholders regarding where the student is on their progress toward graduation and what is still needing to be accomplished.
Setting up these tools is a prerequisite for Graduation Pacing and is strongly recommended at all high schools.
This setup is also required in order to properly print transcripts.
My Graduation Tab Annotated
1) Plus Delta
Empower has built into its software a “Plus/Delta” feedback button. This gives every user a simple way to communicate to the site administrator about their needs or feedback. Please note: This feedback goes to someone local, not to the Empower team. However, if needed, the local administrator can elevate the need to Empower's helpdesk. Learn more in THIS ARTICLE.
2) Graduation Pathway
If a district offers multiple pathways to graduation or curates different options for students with different career goals, Empower can adjust this page to display progress along those.
Learn more about setting up multiple Graduation Pathways in consultation with your Empower Representative.
3) Legend/Filter
This Legend refers to the color of the tiles shown below on the My Learning Path tab and the students' achievement in each.
4) Course Tile
Each tile represents a course. Courses in Empower are sets of standards which districts designate.
5) Course Progress
The bar represents the standards in this course and the student's progress through them. Mouse over it to see a bit more detail. Click on it to drill into the information. Green: Proficient in the standard Yellow: Some progress, but no proficient score yet.
Grey: No summative score yet in that standard.
6) Credits
The numerator here is the number of credits the student has received in this content area. The denominator is the number of credits needed in the content area to graduate.
7) Learning Options
Click on the + to browse the course catalog from the school. Here students may discover they have partial credit in certain courses in which they are not presently enrolled and may choose to select that course to be displayed on their interface so they can easily monitor progress.
Setting up the My Graduation Tab
There are 3 steps to getting the My Graduation Tab set up.
- Define Areas and Pathways (done on a spreadsheet, loaded up via our helpdesk)
- Align Courses to Pathways
- Assign Students to Pathways
Defining Areas & Pathways
Attached to this article (scroll to the bottom) you will find a spreadsheet. Watch the instructional video below, fill out the sheet, and turn it into our helpdesk. Our team will load this sheet into Empower, creating the pathways, areas, and rules needed to properly populate the My Graduation tab.
Notes on the spreadsheet:
Column A (Graduation Area ID) Do not adjust the column or erase it. It is for Empower's use only.
Column B (Graduation Area) These are Content Areas that will appear when this Graduation Type is selected. You will see these as the left most column (row headers) on the My Graduation Tab.
Column C (Graduation Type) This is the broader heading under which Graduation Areas and Pathways are defined. For example, one student may select the High School Diploma Graduation Type and then select a certain Pathway (specialization) within that. That selection will populate their page with the appropriate areas and courses and credit requirements for their selection.
Column D (Required Credits) Put here the number of credits students need to earn in this Graduation Area in order to graduate.
Column E (Start Semester) The semester on which this learning is expected to begin. A 9 here would indicate the first semester of 9th grade. A 9.5 would be second semester of 9th grade.
Column F (Is_Catch_All) A Catch-All means that this area can accept any credits that the student has earned in areas that already have all the required credits. This may be for a Graduation Area such as "Electives."
Each Graduation Type can only have 1 Catch All.
If there is no Catch All set, Graduation Area credit buckets will simply "overflow." Ej, 15/10
Column G (Is Pathway) This column asks if the Graduation Area is a pathway or not. A pathway means that this grad area is what makes this pathway distinct. A 0 (zero) here means that this is a required area of the Graduation Type and will appear in all cases when that Graduation Type is selected. A 1 here will cause a distinct Pathway to be created and selectable in Empower. When selected, this area, along with the required areas of the Graduation Type will appear in the Student's My Graduation Tab. If that Pathway is not selected in the Pathway Manager Tool, this area will not show up for that student.
A student will only be able to be assigned a single pathway at a time.
Each pathway can only have 1 area that is distinct from the required areas.
Pathways are not required.
Aligning Courses to Pathways
Once the Pathways and Areas are defined, new fields and options will appear to Admin users in the Big Idea of each Playlist.
- Open a playlist you want to align to a learning pathway.
- Open the Big Idea.
- Set Playlist Type to Course Playlist
- The below set of options will appear.
- Configure them as desired.
Explanations of these fields are below.
1. Big Idea Type
When you change this setting from Instructional Playlist to Course Playlist, the form will expand to show the below options.
2. Course Number
If you have a Student Information System with course numbers listed, make this number correspond to that number. Empower can identify students who are enrolled in courses in the SIS and automatically assign this playlist to them.
3. Course Credit
How many course credits are awarded for completion of this course?
4. Graduation Type 1
Select which Area credits belong to for this Graduation Type when this course is completed.
5. Graduation Type 2
In this second space, you can decide a secondary Area to assign credits to if the primary Area already has all the credits needed for graduation
6. Is Required
Checking this box means that this particular course is required in this Graduation Type
7. Course Weight
This setting defines how this course weights in the GPA calculation.
Assign Students to Pathways using the Pathway Manager
Once Graduation Types have been set up using spreadsheet (see above), and courses have been aligned to Graduation Areas within those Types, the final step is to assign students to one of the Pathways. This is done in the Pathway Manager.
To get there.
- Go to the Tools Menu (click on "Empower" in the upper left corner)
- Scroll to the E-Admin section
- Select Pathway Manager
- Set the filter for the student(s) you want to work with.
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