Course Tracking

One important aspect of teaching, whether it is in a face to face classroom or an online environment is keeping track of students. This entails knowing who the students are, what their purpose is in taking course work, and how they are performing in the class. There are several software programs that make this task easy to manage.One such software program is Microsoft Excel. While not specifically designed for this purpose, Excel is adept at storing and manipulating information. Students’ names, identification numbers and/or information, notes about students, etc. can be included. Special fields may be designed and incorporated that can remind a teacher why a specific grade was awarded. In addition, summaries of student discussions can be tracked. Grading rubrics may be designed in Excel that enable teachers to maintain current grade information on each student. Perhaps one of the most significant advantages of Excel is its’ widespread distribution. With so many users of Microsoft Office, Excel is already available on many computers.In addition to the variety of uses found with Excel, another software program that is useful in course tracking is Calendar Builder. With this program teachers can publish course calendars that contain due dates for assignments and other important dates.