School-wide configuration:
Year-group by year-group configuration:
- Allowing Students to Track Hours
- Customising Learning Outcomes
- Creating SL Questions
- Setting Automating Email Reminders
Note: This tutorial covers general Service Learning framework instructions. For specific IB guidance, please see configuring Configuring CAS Worksheets or Configuring SA Worksheets.
School-wide Configurations
1. Service Overview
To access the SL configuration navigate to Settings and select a programme other than IB DP and IB MYP. From the dropdown menu click Service Learning. The Overview page allows you to predefine labels for your project.
- Title - refers to the name of the SL project. It will be visible across ManageBac for all users (teachers, parents, and students)
- Abbreviation - the abbreviation is used to avoid repetition and in places where there isn't enough space to display the title
- Icon - from the dropdown menu select an icon that describes your programme. The icon will be displayed on the student profile and Year Group calendar
- Description - is an optional field that will be displayed on the right navigational menu of the project page for both teachers and students
2. Service Learning Framework
The Framework tab contains much of the configuration that will allow you to create a project fit for your needs. The options include:
- Aims & Goals Statement - if enabled the students will be prompted to enter their Aims & Goals for the project. The textbox in the image above is for admin to provide optional guidance to students on how to fill in their Aims & Goals. This guidance will be displayed on the student view.
- Awards - Create custom awards that can be awarded to students.
- Learning Outcomes - Similar to CAS and SA we allow for learning outcomes to be added. These outcomes are to be tracked across activities during the duration of the project. A student's completion depends on their coverage of the learning outcomes. In the configuration admin are able to predefine the default learning outcomes for the project but these can be further modified in each year group.
- Documents - enables the document uploader displayed on the student worksheet.
- Notes & Interviews - enabling this option allows students and teachers to send messages to each other on the student worksheet and it allows teachers to record interview notes, which are only visible to admin and teachers.
- Questions - the functionality is inspired by CAS Questions. The questions are added in the Year Group settings. Teachers add questions and tie them to a learning outcome. Students will be prompted to answer the questions within each activity. The questions displayed depend on the learning outcomes selected in the activity
- SL Project - inspired by CAS Projects, which are long lasting activities that are also big in scope. If Extended Project option is enabled students will be able to mark their activities as an Extended Project activity. The terminology for Extended Project can be customised on the Terminology page.
Approaches can also be configured on the Framework page. They are a set of labels that a student can choose to apply to their activity. The examples from CAS include: Ongoing, School-based, Community-based, and international. Admin users are able to set the name and colour of the activity tags to be displayed when creating a new activity. If you prefer not to use Activity Tags simply delete the existing ones and click Save Changes.
3. Service Types
Service Types tab offers a classification for activities (e.g. in CAS we have Creativity, Activity and Service). On the Service Types tab admin users have the ability to reorder hour types, which will affect the order that they are displayed in to the students and teachers; edit, delete and add service types. If you prefer to not to use Service Types as a method to differentiate strands you may simply remove all the default types.
To add a new Service type, click the Add Type button. There are 4 fields that need to be provided:
- Title - corresponds to the name that will be associated with the hour type
- Abbreviation - on the student worksheet the abbreviation will be displayed as a label
- Color - specifies the color of the label to be displayed on the student worksheet
- Hours - allows admin to set guidelines for the minimum amount of hours required for the Service type. The value entered will appear as a default in all Year Groups but can be overwritten in the Year Group settings.
4. Sevice Terminology
The terminology fields shown above allows you to create a project that will be familiar to your teachers and students based on local requirements or cultural terminology. The hint, located below each field, provides an explanation of what each term is referring to.
Student Progress allows teachers to communicate the progress the student's progress with the student, and other teachers involved in the project. The default list of statuses is identical to the statuses used for the IB core projects. However, you are able to edit the existing statuses by selecting a different icon or changing the title. Additional statuses can also be added by specifying the icon and title. "To Be Determined" cannot be deleted as it is used as the default status in situations where the student progress has not been evaluated yet or if the admin chooses to reset progress for all students. If a status is deleted that was currently assigned to a student, then that student's status will be set to "To Be Determined".
That concludes the configuration for Service Learning if you wish to customise rubrics that are being used to asses students' term progress please follow the guidance below.
5. Service Evaluation
via Settings > Select Programme with SL > Assessment > Assessment Models > Term
If you want to assess student progress in Service Learning on a term basis, tick the Enable evaluation of: SL checkbox in Settings > Select Programme with Service Learning > Assessment > Assessment Models > Term. When SL evaluation is enabled you will find an SL tab below the Rubrics header. The default rubric for SL is a criteria based rubric similar to the rubric used for CAS evaluations.
Customise SL Progress Rubric
The default rubric can be edited by specifying different values and descriptors. The values will appear in a dropdown and teachers will be able to select a value to represent the student's achieved value. The descriptors will be displayed in the right navigational menu next to the corresponding value to provide teachers with evaluation guidance.
The criteria description field is displayed on report cards and allows you to properly convey to parents and students what traits/skills each criteria is assessing.
Submitting Term Grades
In the Year Group, select the SL project and click Submit Term SL Evaluation from the right navigational menu to access the term gradebook for your SL project.
Year-group Configurations
1. Allowing Students to Track Hours
By default, ManageBac does not enable hours tracking for Service Learning, to be consistent with CAS. However, schools can choose to enable and customise this option by year level.
Via Year Group > Edit Year Group Settings, tick the Track Service hours for this group box under Service Learning. You can also choose to show an Hours Chart on student worksheets, and customise how many hours are required in your SL project. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page once done.
2. Customising Learning Outcomes
Learning Outcome defaults are defined via Settings > Academics > Service Learning, but they can be customised for a given Year Group via Edit Year Group Settings.
Teachers and admin are able to add, edit, delete, or reorder the default Learning Outcomes for a Year Group
3. Creating SL Questions
ManageBac allows you to add custom questions that will appear to students every time they create an experience. This provides opportunity for more guided reflection.
You can create new questions via Year Groups > Edit Year Group Settings. Please note the Year Group label may be customised by your school. Depending on the width of your screen, these details may appear at the bottom of the page.
4. Setting Automating Email Reminders
Via Year Group > SL > Manage E-mail Reminders
You can set automated e-mail reminders from the SL tab of your group. Automated e-mail reminders will e-mail your students who have not logged in and/or updated their SL worksheets over the previous 14 days.
You can see key details for current reminders and you can edit them by clicking the pencil icon or delete them by clicking the rubbish icon. Click Add Reminder to create a new reminder.
On the Edit Reminder page, you can disable reminders and you can customize the e-mail subject and message.