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Using INTERVAL Buybacks

For Interval Buybacks, the window to redeem Buybacks is opened on a schedule – usually once a Term for one week.

Watch the video and/or follow the steps below

Outline:

1. Create Buyback offers

2. Students redeem Buyback offers

3. Teacher fulfills student Buyback orders

I Create Buyback offers

(Each item number is shown in the image below. Click the image to zoom.)

1. To create a Buyback offer, sign in to your Teacher Dashboard and then go to the side panel and click on Buybacks and then + New Buyback.

2. Offer Image – Use your own images, or screenshots of images you find on the web, or select from our Buyback images page. (For best fit, image length should be approximately 2.25 times image height – click to download an image dimesion guide.)

3. Offer Title and Description – title and describe the Buyback – let students know the what, when, how, etc.

4. Courses – If you are a middle or high school teacher, you will probably want to use the Select All Courses button. If you are an elementary teacher, with the same students in multiple courses, select one of your courses to put all of your Buyback offers.

5. Shares – decide on the cost of a Buyback Offer based on how popular you believe the offer will be and how many Effort Shares students have. Try to create multiple offers with low, middle, and high-range redemption costs.

6. Show Advanced Options – select this button.

7. Start and End dates – the start date may be any date from the beginning of the quarter to seven or so days prior to the end date. The end date is the date you want all Buyback orders to stop. For example, Teacher A plans to fulfill Buyback orders the week of February 22nd. So Teacher A uses an end date of February 19th. Students will not be able to redeem Buybacks after February 19th (until the next round). It is a good idea to have Buybacks available for longer time periods (not just one week). This will increase student overall enthusiasm. Note – when using the Start and End dates option, you must enter both start and end dates.

8. Expiration date (optional)– put expiration information in the description of your Buyback Offer and enter the expiration date here. For example, Teacher B offers one homework pass per quarter that may not be used during the subsequent quarter so Teacher B enters an expiration date on the homework Buyback and also on the Q1 Homework Pass they create. See Images and Templates for downloadable templates that you can change and print.

9. Max # of Redemptions – if you have a limited number of a particular type of Buyback Offer, enter that number here. For example, you have ten notebooks, so you enter the number 10 into the Max # window.

10. Limit to One Redemption per Student – after a student redeems a “Limit to One…” Buyback offer, it will no longer appear on their Buyback’s page. (NOTE: to give students a limit of 2, or 3, etc., make more of the same Buyback offer and check the “Limit to One…” box each time.)

How many Effort Shares can a student earn in a term? Assuming an 8 week term:

Effort Challenges (done in the background – no teacher involvement): two Effort Shares per Effort category (Ready, Participation, On Task, Behavior) per week = 8 x 8 wks = 64 Effort Shares per Course. (This assumes the teacher is scoring student effort nearly every day.)
Effort Awards (assigned by the teacher from the Recognition category of the Effort Scoring App): Assuming each student has one opportunity for an Effort Award every two weeks, the maximum Effort Shares a student could earn over eight weeks would be 4 x 10 = 40 (per course). For a class of 30 students the teacher would, on average, select 3 Effort Award winners per class day or fifteen students at the end of each week.
Total maximum Effort Shares per 8-week term per Course = 64 + 40 = 104.

II. Students redeem Buyback offers

For Continuous Buybacks, once you show students where to look to see how many Redeemable Shares they have (arrow in image) and how to redeem a Buyback Offer, they are free to redeem whenever they like.

Introducing Buyback offers to students for the first time:

Ask for a volunteer that will allow you to display their Buybacks’ page
Open your Teacher Dashboard from a computer that is connected to a projector
So that other student scores are not shown, freeze the projector image or turn the projector off
Select the Course the volunteer is in and then select their name and then their Buybacks’ tab
Turn the projector back on and go over the costs, descriptions, and limits of each Buyback Offer (Note the Redeem Now button only works from within a Student Portal.)

III. Teacher fulfills student redemptions (aka Buyback orders)

A. View or fulfill redemptions across all Courses

(Item numbers correspond to image numbers.)

1. Select Buybacks from the side-panel of your Teacher Dashboard, and then the Redemptions tab.

2. The number shown in the Buybacks’ button is the number of Unfulfilled Redemptions across all Courses.

3. Use the Search box to search for a Student, Course, Buyback Name, etc.

4. Press the triangle to the right of any column heading to have the table sort alphabetically by column heading.

5. To keep the Redemptions table up-to-date, click the Fulfill button each time you fulfill a student redemption.

B. View or fulfill redemptions – one course at a time

(Item numbers correspond to image numbers.)

6. Select Shares from the side-panel, then a Course, and then the Buybacks tab.

7. Type “Unfulfilled” into the Search box

8. To organize your table by a particular column heading, click the triangle to the right of that column heading

9. Select the orange “Fulfill” button to change a Redemption’s status to “Fulfilled”

10. Generate a table of Redemptions for the selected Course by selecting the CSV box or copy the contents of the table to your computer’s clipboard by selecting the Copy button

V. Suggestions:

If you are distributing coupons or passes (e.g. Fast Pass – to the front of the line) change the status to fulfilled once it is given to the student – do not wait for the student to use the coupon or pass.
For scheduled redemptions (e.g. teaching assistants) change the status to fulfilled as soon as you create and post a list of who and when.
Using the CSV button (see #10 above) to make a table of Redemption orders for each of your courses is especially helpful for teachers using the Interval Buyback procedure. Consider utilizing student helpers to deliver and check-off orders to their classmates (see image below).