In the process of using JupiterEd for Growing in Grace, we have found the below videos and information to be helpful in setting up assignments online. You may click the bullet point below to be taken to the section you need.
Setup
Everything that receives a grade or leads to a grade should be listed as an assignment on the dashboard for the class. This would include any graded Juno pod, Juno doc, uploaded file, or in class graded activity.
Any directions necessary to receive a grade such as directions for writing a paper or project directions should be listed as an assignment with the classification “information only.” Do not list directions for graded material as a calendar post. These get lost and go away.
Calendar Posts
Reserve the calendar for reminders, events, and general messages. For instance: “Study for the test this week on chapter 7!”, “Use the study guide for the final exam to help you get your best score.”, “Field Trip this Friday! Click the link to sign up.” Calendar listings can have attachments like pods, files, and links but these are not graded by the system. Anything posted in the calendar does not get transferred to the next year when you import assignments from a previous semester. This is another reason to keep all directions for assignments on your assignment list. Otherwise you have to recreate all those directions all over again every year.
Dashboard
The dash board is where you will setup your assignments. Developing a class structure is a good way to set expectations for your students and to get them in a rhythm for doing their assignments. It also creates a map or plan for you to post assignments without a lot of time planning on your part. Jupiter will do this for you to a certain extent, if you are smart about the way you enter assignments and set up your term. This video shows how to set up a basic structure for a weekly plan carried throughout the term. Keep in mind you can always delete or add assignments as you go through the term as it fits your needs.
Creating Assignments
When creating assignments, it is important to understand the different types of assignments available and how you can use them to streamline your teaching and grading process. Self grading options can be found in Juno Pods which are attached to an assignment in the dashboard. Juno Docs are writing assignments that can be typed directly into Jupiter. File uploads can be jpegs, pdf files, or even links to external files that are too large to upload. A pdf worksheet can be uploaded that allows the student to draw on it which is great for crossword and search a word puzzles or diagrams. Simplest of all are pure direction assignments which tell students what they need to do in text form. Directions are typically used in conjunction with reading assignments or workbooks. We will look at each type in the following video.
Importing Assignments
If you have already created the curriculum and assignments in a previous year or term, you may copy them from that term to the new one. The only changes that will need to be made are putting in the new dates for each assignment. If you attached pods and they were created by you or copied to your account and shared, then the attachments will still be there. If not you will have to reattach pods to those assignments.
Sharing Assignments
If two instructors are teaching the same subject or if one person is creating pods for another class, it may be necessary to copy them over to their pod list. If you do this, you also want to “share” the pod so any errors can be corrected if they are found. (Nobody’s perfect!) Otherwise you will get an error message saying the author hasn’t given permission.
Independent Assignments
When creating assignments sometimes we need to make them available for specific students and not the class at large. Here is how to do this.
Creating Juno Pods
When creating Juno Pods for assignments each question should be assessed as to the best type of question within Jupiter for the question type. The below video shows you how to create a simple Juno pod.
Multiple Choice & True/False
When given a multiple choice question from your curriculum it’s really easy to put that into Jupiter the way it is. However we can also turn other problems into multiple choice simply by making up other possible answers. True/False questions are basically multiple choice questions where you only have two choices; true or false. Multiple choice and True/False questions automatically self grade.
Multiple Answer
Multiple answer is similar in setup to a multiple choice except that there are multiple answers to the problem. Below is a short video showing the difference.
Sorting & Matching
These two types of problems also automatically self grade. A sorting problem is where you have a list of items that must be put in a specific order. Sorting works well for ordering a process, put numbers in order from least to greatest, or putting a timeline into its proper order.
Matching problems have two lists that must be matched to one another. The options allow you to randomize both lists or to have the list on the left (stems) be static and only randomize the list on the right (choices). Leaving the stems static works well if you are matching terms for a diagram to its identifier; such as A = ?, B = ?, C = ?, and so on.
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Fill Blanks
Fill blank questions give the student the opportunity to type in an answer. This type of question has a variety of uses in all subjects and you can choose to have them automatically self graded or not. The below video illustrates how to set those up.
Short Answer
Short answer questions are similar to fill in the blank questions except that there is only one blank to be graded. These also have the choice between auto self grading or not. The below video shows the difference from fill in the blank to short answer.
Long Answer
These questions are manually graded without the option to self grade. These should be reserved for paragraph responses.
Drawing/Graphing
This is the other type of problem that must be manually graded. There are a variety of drawing and graphing formats from blank screen, draw on an image, number lines, coordinate systems, to grids. These can be tricky to grade, especially if you have large classes and lots of graphing. This video illustrates all the drawing and graphing types of questions.
One shortcut to grading graphing problems is to use a clear report cover over the screen of your device and draw the answer key on it, scrolling through each problem and marking it right or wrong as you grade the whole class at once. The below video shows how to grade the entire class of graphing problems at once.
Creating Videos
Most subject will not need to have videos for instruction. Any subject that has a textbook like history or science, may not ever need a video created. Some subject like English or math may require more individual instruction or explanation depending on the amount of time you invest in instruction. If you need more time each week than the class time allows, video creation may be something to consider.
It is possible to attach a video to an assignment as a link or to include a video in a Juno pod. In our algebra lessons a video illustrating how to solve for each type of problem in the lesson is included before the homework assignment problems. It is dependent on the subject matter at hand.
It is relatively easy to go out to YouTube or Vimeo and find a premade instructional video that you can then copy the link and paste into Jupiter. There is also the option of creating your own videos and housing them within a YouTube or Vimeo channel of your own and copying the links from there. See the below video for how to add a video to an assignment or a Juno Pod.
One of the easiest ways to create a video is through Canva. Begin with a presentation template, choosing the style you like and craft each slide with the information you need to present. Be sure to keep each slide to about 10 seconds or less. Longer than that will be boring and students will disengage. Break up the topic as much as possible. Then you will click Share>Present and Record. This will take you to a recording studio that will allow you to record yourself talking over the presentation as you progress through it. When completed you can download it and save it to your channel where you can then link it to Jupiter as you need to.
Grading
The way you grade has an impact on the overall score within Jupiter. You have multiple options in regards to letting the number of points in a pod dictate the score, using a rubric to dictate the score, using a percentage, or using a letter (A, B, etc.). Regardless of the methodology, JupiterEd uses a point system to ultimately weight each assignment and determine the overall grade. The number of points you say as assignment is worth dictates its impact to the category it is assigned to.
Categories
Each assignment gets two designations. The grading method and the category. The category determines where the grade gets added in and how much it ultimately impacts the total score.
In this assignment, the pod contains 21 possible points. When the pod was attached, the input was automatically changed to points. The category is set by the instructor to “Lessons” as it is a lesson. These 21 points are added to the total points in the lessons category. If the category of this assignment gets changed, then those points will be deducted from lessons and added to the new category. All of this is done automatically.
If you adjust the worth number to be 100, Jupiter will automatically add 100 points to the lessons category and divide 100 by 21 and give that many points to the student for each correct answer. This is the same thing as giving a percentage grade instead of a point grade.
Below is a scenario for a class with point totals for each category based on the assignments given. These calculations are automatic.
| Classwork 20% 160 points possible | Homework 60% 1200 points possible | Tests 20% 80 points possible | Score | GPA |
| (150/160) x 0.2 = 18.75 | (1089/1200) x 0.6 = 54.45 | (54/80) x .2 = 13.5 | 86.7 | 3.0 |
| 94% | 91% | 68% | 84 | 3.0 |
| A | A | D | B | 3.0 |
As you can see in grading, what really matters is the percentage of weight you give each category in your class and the number of points each assignment is worth. Jupiter ed will automatically calculate any percentage or letter grade into a quantity of points relative to the assignment.
You designate the categories for your classroom and how much you think it should impact the overall score. Categories for regular assignments should total 100%. As you can see above, classwork 20% plus homework 60% plus tests 20% equals 100%.
Extra Credit Points
JupiterEd provides an “Extra Credit Points” assignment designation that you can then add to any category. Meaning that if you want to give students the opportunity to improve their category score, you can assign them a project and designate it “Extra Credit Points” and select the category for the assignment. In the below example, the instructor had two assignments in their dashboard labeled “Extra Homework Points” and “Extra Test Points”. Whenever this student completed an extra project or report the instructor added a few points to the category it related to. These extra 32 points over the course of the year raised the student from a B to an A without the need for creating several extra assignments in the dashboard. Note that the assignment is not shown to students so they cannot see the assignment at all.
| Classwork 20% 160 points possible | Homework 60% 1200 points possible | Tests 20% 80 points possible | Score | GPA |
| (150/160) x 0.2 = 18.75 | (1089/1200) x 0.6 = 54.45 | (54/80) x .2 = 13.5 | 86.7 | 3.0 |
| EC pt 20 (1109/1200) x 0.6 = 55.45 | EC pts 12 (66/80) x .2 = 16.5 | 90.7 | 4.0 |
Keeping notes in the comment field is a great way to record why this student earned these points so you can point to a reason for merit/behavior points or some other honorable mention.
Bonus Category
The bonus category should only be used if you are an instructor who wants to limit the impact of bonus points on students’ overall grades because you are someone who gives them out regularly. See the below illustration. Where it says bonus points 40 points possible, this means the max points you have given any one student was 40 and all other students are graded as a percentage of 40. The max score a student can receive in your class is 105 because 20% + 60% + 20% + 5% = 105%. Bonus points category should always be above the 100% for regular assignments.
The below student received a total of 32 bonus points. When we use that in the scenario of bonus points below, we see it has a lesser impact on their overall grade. A bonus point category will always be compared percentage wise to whatever total bonus points are available, whereas extra credit points are awarded to an individual student’s overall score with greater positive impact if all other scores remain the same.
| Classwork 20% 160 points possible | Homework 60% 1200 points possible | Tests 20% 80 points possible | Bonus Points 5% 40 points possible | Score |
| (150/160) x 0.2 = 18.75 | (1089/1200) x 0.6 = 54.45 | (54/80) x .2 = 13.5 | (32/40) x .05 = 0.04 | 86.74 |
Points
If a Juno Pod is used, when it is attached to the assignment, the points in the pod are automatically adjusted in the assignment to the number of points in the pod. This can then be manually adjusted. Let’s say there are 21 points in a pod, but you have a bonus question in it. You can decrease the number of points to worth 20 out of 20 to allow for a score above 100% or for the student to get a bonus point. This also allows a student to get one problem incorrect and still make 100.
If you choose to use a rubric for grading writing assignments, the number of points are determined by the points in the rubric.
For all other assignments you can manually type in the number of points that assignment is worth. Then JupiterEd will automatically calculate the number of points correct based on the percentage or letter grade or percent you award the student.
If you determine an assignment is worth 20 points and the grade is given as 85%, Jupiter will multiply 20 times .85 and award the student 17 points correct. You can easily give every assignment a value of 100 points to work around this if you do not use pods or rubrics. The same number of points for every assignment gives them even weight relative to their category and gives a level playing field per assignment.
Grading Mathematics
Mathematics is one of those subjects where you may not wish to adjust point values. This is especially true where one assignment might have 20 problems and another assignment might have 5 depending on the difficulty level of the assignment. Every correct answer is worth at least one point and the student can see where the points are awarded in each assignment. It is easier for them to understand where their grade comes from as Jupiter displays the total number of points correct per category versus the total number of points in that category. Below we see an algebra 2 class where there are 1025 possible problems in the lessons category with the student getting 1022.5 of them correct for a 99.8% score for lessons which counts as 60% of her final grade. There are a total of 171 problems in the testing category where the student completed 130.5 of them correctly for a score of 76.3% which counts as 40% of her grade. This gives her an overall grade of 90.4 or an A, ranking her #1 in her class where the class average is 72.8%.
The student has the ability to see all of this on their class assignment page.
In this student’s case, she needs to rework 3 problems to get 100% in lessons and 41 problems to get 100% in tests. If the instructor does allow it, rather than search through each pod to mark the answers correct, the instructor can simply create an extra credit assignment and award the points in the relative category.