What you see on the Dashboard

After you sign in, Dashboard is the home page. The greeting and your role always appear at the top. The cards below that depend on whether you are a Teacher, Student, Parent, or IT Support. Empty operational cards (nothing to unlock, nothing to grade) stay hidden until there is work.

Unread notifications appear for every role when you have any. Open a row for the message, or use View all notifications.

Teacher

• My Courses — courses you are enrolled in as teacher (not templates you have not cloned). Each row shows status, teachers, and student count. Active courses have Open course. Closed courses show the enrollment span and do not open from here (reactivate on the Courses page; see How the Courses page works).
• Open assessments — class assessments that are open or in a class-wide retake, plus per-student REDO grants. Jump to the course Assessments list, or End REDO for a student grant.
• Students awaiting assessment unlock — live focus-lock requests (refreshes on its own). Unlock Assessment opens the grading page for that attempt.
• Manual grading required — assessments with open-ended work still waiting. Count is students who still need a teacher score. Co-teachers only see classes they can access.
• Release grades — assessments whose scores are ready but not yet released. Goes to the course Grades page.
• Classroom Management — shortcut labeled Access Question Bank (Django admin tools for question content).

Student

• My Courses — active enrollments only (closed courses are not listed here). Status, teachers, and Open course when the course is live.
• Open assessments — work you can start or continue, including retakes (REDO). Shows in-progress vs retake, and remaining window time when an auto-open window is ending. Go to assessments highlights that assessment.
• My closed course grades — historic, view-only grades for courses that have closed, with enrollment dates. You can hide individual rows (stored in this browser) and show them again later.

Students do not see teacher unlock, manual grading, or release-grade cards.

Parent

Parents do not get a My Courses list of their own classrooms. Instead:

• If no teacher has invited you yet: a single card explaining that you need an invitation link from the course’s teacher to view a student’s grades.
• If you have access: one pair of cards per linked student — Active courses and Closed courses. Each row names the course, status, and teachers. Closed rows also show the enrollment span. View grades opens that student’s read-only grade summary for the course.

Parents cannot open the live course as a teacher or take assessments. Trashed courses are omitted until restored.

IT Support

• A short note that you are logged in as IT Support with admin/database access
• My Courses — same enrollment list as a teacher (courses you own or are enrolled in), including student counts
• Open assessments — same as teachers, for courses you manage
• Students awaiting assessment unlock — same live unlock card
• Release grades — when assessments you manage need release

IT Support does not get the Teacher-only Manual grading required or Classroom Management cards. Admin tools live in the Admin nav (Tickets, Q&A Admin, Notifications, Announcements, Database) instead. For inbox blasts and teacher audience filters, see How the Notifications admin works.

What never appears here

• Explorer, Public Library, and Manage Groups — those stay under Explorer
• The Courses tile roster (templates, purchase, status) — that is the Courses page
• Site-wide banners — those sit in the header above the dashboard when enabled

FAQ

Why is a card missing?

Most action cards hide when empty. My Courses still shows “No courses assigned yet.” Parent empty-state copy appears when you have no grade invites.

Why can’t I open a closed course from the dashboard?

Teachers reactivate from Courses. Students use My closed course grades for view-only history. Parents use View grades on the closed-course card.