How do you handle Incompletes?

Shane.S.150

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone in the community could provide examples of how they are handling incompletes. For example, we have a number of students (hundreds per semester) who will receive incompletes and get an extension to have extended access to a course to complete assignments etc… if they meet specific criteria. If approved they essentially have access to the full course until a Final Grade has been submitted.

Currently, we are a Blackboard school and students remain with access to the full course until a Final Grade has been submitted. This is configured via our Information Systems team managing the SIS integration. When a student is given an incomplete they won't have a Final Grade, so they would have full access to the course. Once the Final Grade is submitted by the instructor at a agreed upon date the student would lose access to the course 2 weeks later. However, within Brightspace we are using Ellucian ILP for our SIS integration as opposed to what was being used in Blackboard, so we need to find a way to implement this in Brightspace as it is our understanding this cannot be configured via Ellucian ILP.

We were presented with possibly using Intelligent Agents to complete this however it was our understanding the Instructor would need to create multiple Intelligent Agents within the course. It was explained that you would have one Intelligent Agent for the Assignment where the extension has been granted and then another or many others for each area that relates to the content of the assignment as it was explained that there was no way to give access to the whole course using this method. Is this possible?

Our goal is to ensure that when a student is given an Incomplete they will continue to have access to the full course and its content until a Final Grade has been submitted. This is not something we can do as a manual process as we receive hundreds of students with incompletes per semester.

Is it possible to set up one Intelligent Agent to give a student access to the whole course until the Final Grade has been entered? If not what are some methods you are using?

We appreciate any feedback you may be able to provide in regard to these questions.

Thanks,
Shane

Andrea.M.553

Hi Shane,

I assume your courses close from student view at a certain date. One option is to create an additional "Incomplete Student" role that allows those specific students to access past courses. You are correct that sending this "Incomplete" role is a limitation of ILP, and would need to be done manually via bulk upload in the interface or via API. Via API, this could be completely automated, both the changing to the incomplete role and the changing back to the regular student role.

Intelligent agents work via release conditions and could do a role switch to this "incomplete student" role, but unfortunately, there is no release condition for final grade NOT released. Even if there was a Release Condition for this, I am unsure even if this would work in your use case, as their final grade may be released as an Incomplete.

I hope this helps. Please reach out to your Customer Success Manager for additional assistance.

Best,

Andrea

Paula.C.2956

Hi -

Have there been any updates on the question above about allowing specific users access to a closed course? This was definitely tricky to find, and it's exactly what I need to do! :) - We do have the "new experience" - not sure if that matters. Right now, I have been going in and extending the course offering end date, but I would rather not do that. Thanks for any suggestions.

Paula

Victor.B.4864

Hi @Paula.C.2956,

I hope you are doing well.

If you prefer not to extend the course offering end date, you can update the student’s role settings to allow access to past courses. This can be done by enabling the “Access to past courses” permission within their role.

Alternatively, as Andrea mentioned, you can create a new custom role with this setting enabled and assign it to students as needed, so only they can access past courses.

I hope this meets your needs. Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Best regards,

Victor

Paula.C.2956

Hi Victor,

Thank you! I think it will. One question. If I allow the option to access past courses, will I have the ability to specify which courses or would the student have access to all of their past courses?

Ajith.J.824

Hi @Paula.C.2956

Enabling the ‘Access past courses’ role setting will grant users with that role access to all past courses in which they are enrolled. It is not possible to select or limit which specific past courses they can access.

Best Regards,
Ajith Joseph

Paula.C.2956

Thanks, Ajith.

I didn't think so, but wanted to confirm.

Paula