HSTOnline User Guide

Report: Transcript

Introduction

A Transcript is a document which contains grading and other information for your Student for one or more school years at the same time. HSTOnline offers three formats for creating a Transcript. The overall information is the same in each. It is simply a matter of choosing which format best meets your needs.

No matter which format you choose, you can decide:

What personal information to include in the header of the report
Which Subjects/Courses to include
Which School Years to include. In the Combined format, you can select a specific date range for the report to cover.
Which supplementary information to include in the report: Credit Units, GPA/Credit Summary, Schools Attended, Activities & Achievements, and/or Standardized Test results.
Whether to include a signature and/or notary line

Grades are calculated in the following manner:

Term grades are calculated and rounded according to your Grading Options.
The Term grades for each Semester are averaged together to generate the Semester grade.
The Semester grades are averaged together to generate the Year grade.

Transcript Samples

Transcript - Full Page

The Full Page format allows for the inclusion of percentage grades along with letter grades for each semester.

Transcript - Columns

The Column format displays your grades in a more compact format of newspaper columns.

Transcript - Combined

The Combined format also displays your grade in a compact, columnar format. It provides the ability to list grades without noting specific years in which those grades were attained. This version will display one line for each Course that has at least one completed, graded assignment within the date range you specify. There are no semesters in this report, just a single grade, calculated from all the pertinent Assignments according to your Grading Options.

Credit Summary/GPA

The Credit Summary lists the number of Credits earned in each Subject for each year of the Transcript. Totals are provided by year and by Subject. Credits are awarded according to your Calculation Options for each Course.

For calculation of GPA, HSTOnline uses the guidelines outlined in the October 2009 HSLDA E-lert.

In essence, the total grade points for the year are divided by the total credits for one year. Traditionally, credits for Pass/Fail classes are not included in GPA calculations. HSTOnline allows you to determine which grading scales are included in the Transcript GPA calculation.

If The Student has 6.5 credits for the year and the grade points for the letter grades earned equals 21.5, then the GPA for that year is 21.5 / 6.5 = 3.307 which rounds to 3.31

The cumulative GPA - the GPA for all years covered in the Transcript - is not simply an average of the yearly GPA values. Instead, as recommended in the HSLDA E-lert, the sum of all the grade points for all years included in the Transcript are divided by the sum of all credits for those years.

If you elect to hide the Credit Units in the grading portion of the Transcript, the Credit Summary/GPA section will also be disabled.

Transcript Report Options

Set the options needed for the report. HSTOnline will remember your settings until you change them. The options for each of the three formats are saved individually.

Report Title

The default name for this report is: Official Transcript. You can change the Report Title to anything you like, up to 150 characters. The actual report will display your school name followed by a dash and whatever Title you enter here.

Graduation Label

The default name for this field is: Expected Graduation Date. The label will only appear if you choose to display the Graduation Date in the Header options, below.

Student

Select a Student from the drop down list. The Transcript report can be created for one Student at a time.

School Years/Date Range

For the Full Page and Columns formats, click or touch the School Years field name or the pencil icon to choose the School Years to include in the Transcript.
For the Combined format, enter the date range you want HSTOnline to use when gathering graded Assignments for the Transcript. Enter a date in the mm/dd/yyyy format or click or touch the Calendar icon to select a date.

School Year Selector for Full Page and Columns

Subject/Course

Click or touch the Subject/Course field name or the pencil icon to choose the Subjects/Courses you want to include in the report. The Subject/Course option window includes all Active and Archived Subjects and Courses for selection.

Select which items you want to include in the Transcript header area. This information comes from the Student List and School Profile areas. If there is no data in a selected header item, the label for that item will not appear on the Transcript.

Body

For the Columns and Combined formats, choose whether or not to include Credit Units on the Transcript. If you disabled Credit Units, the option to include GPA/Credit Summary in the Supplementary section will be disabled as well.
For the Full Page format, choose whether ot include Credit Units, Letter Grades and/or Percentage Grades on the Transcript. If you disabled Credit Units, the option to include GPA/Credit Summary in the Supplementary section will be disabled as well.

Supplementary

Choose which additional information will be included in the report:

GPA/Credit Summary: This option is disabled if you have chosen not to display Credit Units. If enabled, the summary will display immediately after the grading information in the Transcript.
Schools Attended: Choose whether or not to include Schools Attended information.
Activities & Achievements: Choose whether or not to include Activities & Achievements information.
- If you include Activities & Achievements, you can also choose whether to display hours information for each entry.
Standardized Tests: Choose whether or not to include Standardized Test information.
Signature Line: Choose whether or not to include a signature line.
Notary Line: Choose whether or not to include a notary line.
Date/Time in Footer: Choose whether to display the date and time when the Home/Away report was generated. The date and time will be determined based on your Time Zone settings.

Creating Data for a Transcript for Prior Years

To create data from previous years (prior to your using HSTOnline) to be included in a Transcript, you only need to create one completed and graded assignment for each subject/course for each term the class was taken. You can follow these steps to enter summary grades for any year of homeschooling.

Step One: Create School Years and Terms

You will want to create a School Year with two terms - one for each semester - for each year of school work to be reported.

On the HSTOnline menu, click or touch School Years/Terms under the 'Manage Lists' section.
On the School Years page, click or touch the Action button and choose Add.
Fill in the dates as needed. Please refer to the School Year/Terms Help Page for step-by-step instructions.
Create all the School Years needed.

Step Two: Create Subjects Needed

You can actually skip this step if you like, and simply use the Smart-Entry feature of the Subject/Course field. If you go this route, after you have entered all your Assignments, you can then go to the Subjects page and make any changes needed to the Core/Elective status of the new Subject.

If you want to enter your Subjects first:

On the HSTOnline menu, click or touch Subjects under the 'Manage Lists' section.
On the Subjects page, click or touch the Action button and choose Add to open the Add Subject window.
Enter a name for the new Subject and set the Core/Elective Status. Please refer to the Subjects Help Page for step-by-step instructions.
Create all the Subjects needed.

Step Three: Create Courses Needed

You can actually skip this step if you like, and simply use the Smart-Entry feature of the Subject/Course field. If you go this route, after you have entered all your Assignments, you can then go to the Courses page in turn and make any adjustments necessary to the default entries to award additional credits or change the grading scale, etc.

If you want to enter your Courses first:

On the HSTOnline menu, click or touch Courses under the 'Manage Lists' section.
On the Courses page, click or touch the Action button and choose Add to open the Add Course window.
Enter a name and other parameters for the new Course. Please refer to the Courses Help Page for step-by-step instructions.
Create all the Courses you need.

Step Four: Add Assignments

While you can enter Assignments from the Agenda - Calendar View or Agenda - List View, we recommend entering from the Agenda - List view because you can set the filters to see all the newly entered items at once.

On the HSTOnline menu, click or touch 'Agenda - List View' under the 'Schedules and Planning' section.
Use the Agenda - List View Filters button to set the Date Range and Student you'll be working with. Set the Types filter to only Assignments, to simplify the view. Set the Completion and Subject/Course filters as needed for the areas you'll be working on.
Click or touch the Add button and select 'Assignment - Single' to open the Add Assignment window.
Enter the bare bones necessary for this Assignment:
- Student: Select a Student from the list.
- Subject/Course: If you did not add the Subjects/Courses you need in Step 2 above, you can use the Smart Entry feature to add a new Subject, or a new Course for an existing Subject.
- Date: Make sure that date falls within the Term you are reporting for.
- Points Possible/Points Earned: Enter points to generate the percentage grade you need for this Subject/Course for the Term.
- Complete: Click or touch the Teacher box in the Complete field to generate a percentage grade.
Click or touch:
- Save to add this item to your Agenda.
- The 'Add Another' hyperlink in the top right corner to save this Assignment and add another. You can click 'Add Another' each time until you have entered the last new Assignment needed and then click the Save button to end the Add process.

Step Five: Create Transcript

Once you have completed all your entries in Step Four, you can run the Transcript report.

Generating a Transcript

On the HSTOnline menu, click or touch one of the Transcript formats under the 'Reports' section.
Fill out the Report options as needed. HSTOnline will remember your settings until you change them.
Click or touch the Generate Report button. HSTOnline will create the report using the options you have set.
When the report is ready, the Pick Up Report button becomes visible. Click or touch it to download the generated file.
- All reports are created as PDFs which you can review, print, email as you would with any PDF document.
If you made an error in your option settings, just reset the options as needed and click or touch Generate Report again.