What is a "course day"?

Modified on Mon, 09 Jan 2023 at 04:46 PM

In many schools, one teacher may teach the same class to multiple independent groups of students. Ella calls these "class sections". For instance, a math teacher might teach Algebra to four different groups of 25 students at different meeting times.


In other Learning Management Systems (LMS), supporting this situation requires that the teacher create four instances of the same course and every time an assignment or test is planned, that assignment or test must be created four times, once for each instance of the course.


Ella saves teachers time managing multi-section courses by allowing the teacher to create each course activity once and have each section "inherit" the activity details and even the schedule for when that activity will be taught, announced, or due.


This is done with the concept of "course days".


Course days work as follows. Let's assume that your school's block schedule is such that all students have every course on Wednesdays. Then, half of each student's classes meet Monday and Thursday and the other half meet Tuesday and Friday.


For a teacher of a multi-section course, this means that all sections of their course meet the same number of times each week, but on different days or times.


Using the example of a math teacher with four Algebra sections, the meeting times might be as follows:


  • Section 1 meets Monday, Wednesday and Thursday at 8a.
  • Section 2 meets Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at 9:30a.
  • Section 3 meets Monday, Wednesday and Thursday at 11a.
  • Section 4 meets Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at 1p.


Assuming that a semester starts on a Monday, this means that Ella can automatically establish a pattern for this course's "course days as follows:


  • The first Monday and Tuesday combine as the first course day.
  • Wednesday is the second course day.
  • Thursday and Friday are the third course day.
  • The following Monday and Tuesday are the fourth course day.
  • And so on...


Why do we do this? It's logical to assume that on the first course day, if a teacher teachers a lesson on multiplying fractions that all four sections would receive that lesson at their respective course meeting time on course day number one.


Thus, when teachers schedule their course activities, they drag them to a course day and each section of a multi-section course automatically inherits the schedule from the "master".


Then, teachers can adjust individual sections to handle scenarios such as a snow day that affects one or two sections, but not others, or an individual section that needs more time than others on some curriculum.

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