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School & District License: Schoology Grade Passback

Learn how to pass grades back to Schoology automatically

Written by Neta Raz Studnitski

What is Grade Passback?

Schoology grade passback is a feature for School & District licensed organizations that allows teachers to return scores from Formative assignments back to Schoology.

Automatic vs. Manual Grade Passback

Formative offers two methods to passing grades back to Schoology - Automatic and Manual.

Automatic Grade Passback is enabled at the assignment level and applies only to formatives that incorporate auto-graded questions only (no rubrics or question types that require manual scoring by the teacher), and it will sends grades back to Schoology without any action from the teacher once all the required conditions have been met (see below).

Manual Grade Passback applies to all formatives and can be triggered by the teacher at any time once students have launched the assignment from within Schoology and started working on it.

Below you can find the specific prerequisites for each Grade Passback method along with step-by-step instructions.


Automatic Grade Passback

Toggling on the assignment setting will send grades back from Formative into Canvas automatically, as long as all the prerequisites and conditions below are met.

Prerequisites for Automatic Grade Passback

There are a few initial steps to ensure the automatic passback feature is available on a formative:

  • Integration setup prerequisites

    • You must be a part of a School & District license with Formative

    • Formative must have been added as an external tool to Schoology (please refer to these instructions for LTI integration if this is not the case)

  • Formative specific prerequisites

    • The formative must include auto-graded questions exclusively. Any questions requiring manual scoring (to include rubrics) will disqualify the formative from Automatic Grade Passback

    • The formative must have been added as an assignment in Schoology

    • You must have given the assignment a points value

  • Student access & submission prerequisites

    • Your students must open the formative in the Schoology assignment and answer questions within Schoology for grade passback to work. (They should not log in directly on the Formative website.)

    • Your students' work must have been fully submitted (either by the student or by the teacher on the behalf of the student)

How Automatic Grade Passback Works

Once the assignment is fully submitted (by the student or via teacher on behalf of the student) and all questions are auto-graded, scores are automatically sent back to Schoology.

Unanswered Questions

Please note, that the only grades that pass back automatically are the ones fully completed at the time of the initial submission.

Any update to the grade in Formative will require a manual passback to send the updates back into Schoology, including:

  • Students left questions unanswered when originally submitting and went back to complete them after submission

  • Students edited previously submitted responses

  • Teachers manually adjusted scores for students after submission

  • Teachers changed either the answer key or the point value of questions the students already submitted answers to

  • Multiple attempts were taken (only the 1st attempt will pass back automatically)


Manual Grade Passback

As mentioned before, if any part of the assignment requires manual teacher scoring, like an open-ended question, automatic passback will not apply.

However, teachers can use Manual Grade Passback to send the grades back, as long as the prerequisites below are fully met.

Teachers can also use Manaual Grade Passback if any of the students' scores need to be updated after they've already been sent to Schoology.

Prerequisites for Manual Grade Passback

There are a few initial steps to ensure the passback feature is available on a formative:

  • Integration setup prerequisites

    • You must be a part of a School & District license with Formative

    • Formative must have been added as an external tool to Schoology (please refer to these instructions for LTI integration if this is not the case)

  • Formative specific prerequisites

    • The formative must have been assigned in Formative and then added as an external tool to Materials in Schoology

    • You must have checked "Enable grading" on the Add External Tool modal.

  • Student access & submission prerequisites

    • Your students must open the formative in Schoology and answer questions within Schoology for grade passback to start working. (They cannot log in directly on the Formative website.)

Use Manual Grade Passback

Ready to get started?

After your students have started responding to questions, open the formative assignment from the Materials tab within Schoology, click on the triple dots near the top right, and select "Grade Passback:"

You will be presented with an interface where you can choose which students' grades you wish to copy to the Schoology gradebook.

Note: You can override the grade on this interface before passing back. This will not affect the grade in Formative, only in Schoology (after clicking "Send").

Complete/incomplete grades with LTI Grade Passback

Enabling complete/incomplete grading is now an option! When enabled, it gives 100% to students who submitted. Teachers can also manually adjust the complete/ incomplete status prior to passing the grades back.

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Troubleshooting

Quick Summary

Scenario

Passback Type

What Happens

Formative is fully auto-graded & submitted

Automatic

Grades sync automatically to Schoology.

Formative contains open-ended questions or rubrics

Manual

Use Manual Grade Passback after grading.

Formative was not launched via LMS

No automatic passback occurs.

Assignment is no longer associated with this tool

This can occur if the assignment the student(s) used to answer the formative was removed or changed not to use Formative. You will likely have to manually enter the grades in this case as Formative no longer has the right information it needs to pass grades to the right place in the gradebook.

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