PowerTeacher Pro - Creating student groups

[Danielle4012]

We also would love to be able to create sub groups in power teacher pro, the old power school let us by simply clicking the + sign and adding our groups within each class period. You could also filter by the groups (A, B, C). Can this be added back to Power Teacher Pro?? We have three P.E. Teachers, and a Health teacher and we always grouped our classes within each class period.

[HughH]

Can you create student groups in PowerTeacher Pro like you could in PowerTeacher Gradebook?

If not, has anyone found a workaround for this?

My teachers really need this feature.

[joshk]

Good Morning @HughH!

Thank you for your post. At this time PowerTeacher Gradebook is the only solution of the two that is able to create and use student groups. While this is not a feature in PowerTeacher Pro at this time, I have gone ahead and shared your feedback with the Product Team. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us and helping to make PowerSchool's solutions even better!

Best,

JoshK

PowerSchool Community Admin 

[KElms]

You can make groups in Learning.  While they don't translate to the grade book, if you set an assignment by groups, it can make life a little easier, but you will have to alter the students tab in PTP if it's pushed over from Learning.

If you are looking to only group in PTP:

Another way we artifically make groups in the PTP is to create a dummy assignment (not published and exempt from grades) that has only certain students ticked (on the student tab). Do this for each of the groups you want.  

Then, duplicate that assignment, change the details: name, publish, scoring, etc. but not the students. And there you go! 

I agree having the group functionality back would be helpful, but given that that there is grouping in Learning, maybe they just need to make certain aspects of that transferrable to grade book?

Kind regards, 

Kim

[kfchartier]

Thank you for the grouping strategy.  To clarify, does this mean that for each assignment, you would enter the assignment 4 times if you have 4 different groups?  If not, I am not quite sure what I missed in the description!

Thanks,

Kathleen Chartier

[KElms]

Yes. Create the assignment for the first group, then duplicate it 3 more times. Each time you will need to add/edit students. I always change the name to reflect the group so it’s easier to see in the assignment list. it’s not the most elegant solution, but it does work. 

[PS_AM1]

Hi @Danielle4012,

Thank you for your posting in the Community!  I will submit this is a feature request to the product team for review.  If additional information is needed, we will follow up with you.  

Thank you for sharing your suggestions with us to improve the customer experience!

[Danielle4012]

This feature would save several schools in our corporation a lot of headache. We have to have a way to create sub groups, and our school has adopted power teacher pro. Do you think they will be able to add this if you submit the request? The sub groups within power school and the ability to highlight and sort the groups. Thanks so much!

[PS_AM1]

Hi @Danielle4012,

Thank you for providing reasons this feature would be beneficial!  I can submit the request but I cannot guarantee the feature will be added.  Let's see what happens!

[Danielle4012]

Okay, thank you! I’ll keep my fingers crossed...

[PS_AM1]

@Danielle4012,

You are most welcome.

Have a great day!

[Danielle4012]

Hi there, I just wanted to ask how long it would take to hear back about adding student groups to PowerTeacher Pro. Can I talk to someone in charge of adding feature to the grade book? My colleagues and I are getting very nervous about this school year and I want to do everything I can to hopefully solve this issue. My corporation is searching for ways to work around this, but they haven’t had any luck yet. Thanks so much!

[jamiem7]

PowerSchool is currently working to make sure that customers have all of the most important features from PowerTeacher Gradebook available in our most current products.

We're currently working to ensure that all of the final grading functionality that existed in PowerTeacher Gradebook is available for our customers in PowerTeacher Pro, including the ability for teachers to edit the grade scales associated with their courses and how standards can be weighted when calculating a traditional grade. We are also working on expanding reporting capabilities to include reports from PowerTeacher Gradebook, including the missing assignment report and others, as well as other features, such as previewing the effects of an assignment grade on a student's final grade.

In the case of Student Groups, that is functionality we’re currently building in Unified Classroom so that it’s part of the instructional process. PowerSchool is currently researching ways to allow self-hosted customers to adopt Unified Classroom.

[DanM3]

As a longtime user of the PowerSchool SIS, I was really expecting that the functionality from PTG iwould already have been added to PowerTeacher Pro by now. Afterall, it's been three years since the transition.  We were an early adopter of PTP and paid the price (disgruntled teachers) about the lack of and missing functionality of the product. 

[jamiem7]

Thank you for your feedback! @DanM3 

I have provided your feedback to the PowerSchool Product Team working with PowerTeacher Pro.  

[reynoldsn]

Hi @jamiem7,

In communicating with PS support yesterday, the topic of PTP groups came up and I mentioned the enhancement request.     The support rep was not able to locate the PTP group enhancement request in the system.

[jamiem7]

@reynoldsn 

I'm sorry to hear the enhancement request was not found.  I have added three links below to enhancement requests for the ability to create groups in PowerTeacher Pro.  These requests were submitted by other users in PowerSource.

I did reach out to the Product team internally to share the feedback in this thread.  The Product team shared that the feature being reviewed for the ability to incorporate into PowerTeacher Pro.  However, there is not a date or version in which the feature will be added at this time.

PowerTeacher Pro Allow teachers to create their own Groups

Custom Class Group

Create Groups

[Danielle4012]

It seems like an easy function to add, in PowerSchool grade book you just hit the (+) sign for student groups and then all of our P.E./Health teachers could filter by their groups. When we rotated every 4 1/2 weeks, it made it easy to highlight and filter the groups we had at any certain time. I am confused when you talk about unified classroom, all I would love to see is this added to PowerTeacher pro so we can use this year. Is there any way my corporation can add this or by paying extra for something? This is our first year using power teacher pro, and I agree that the old power school grade book had many more functions. **most importantly student groups

[reynoldsn]

@PS_AM1 @Danielle4012 @jamiem7 @kolsen @DanM3 

It is disappointing to see that some beneficial features were lost when we moved to PTP.   Using Groups in coursework is a vital part of learning and it's most helpful to the teacher to be able to add the groups into the gradebook system.

Do we have any word on whether this will be added to PTP before the 2020-2021 school year?

thanks for the information!

[AbrittyB]

Hi! @reynoldsn,

Thank you for the product feedback!

I have checked the list of the upcoming enhancements of PowerTeacher Pro and including Groups in coursework is not currently listed as a feature for the 2020-2021 school year. I have placed an emphasis on the enhancement request to PowerSchool SIS product team.

Please let us know if we can assist you with anything else.

AbrittyB

PowerSchool Community Moderator

Please give Kudos to suggestions that help you! 

If the answer helps solve your issue, please select Accept As Solution on their post so others can see the solution, too!

[Lyoder]

It would certainly be helpful to have this feature back from the old PTG gradebooks.  With all of the unique scheduling scenarios that teachers will be encountering this year due to Covid, the ability to group their students for tracking purposes is more important than ever!  The teams grouping only helps them when it comes to taking attendance.  Any way to move this up in the development queue would be very much appreciated.