Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why does the Lesson Planner tell me that I have exceeded my 12,000-character limit, but I don't believe I have 12,000 characters in the block?

This problem happens most often when information is copied from another program (Microsoft Word) into OnCourse. The reason is because copying from other programs sometimes results in inadvertently capturing large amounts of hidden characters.

So, if you copy the word "cat" from Microsoft Word, you may actually be copying "<font=calibri><size=3>cat</size=3></font>"

To avoid this issue, OnCourse has two special paste buttons on the planner toolbar that will help:

• Paste from Word will attempt to strip any unnecessary formatting, while keeping the look and feel of the text you've copied.

• If Paste from Word doesn't work, try Paste as Plain Text, which will strip all formatting and paste the bare text. You can then reformat using the OnCourse toolbar.

2. Why can't I see my colleague's plans? I put their sharing ID number in the correct area under Sharing.

To see a colleague's plans, that person must put YOUR sharing ID into their sharing window.

You'll know that your colleague did this successfully when their name appears in your list of "Teachers Whose Lesson Plans I Can View".

Then, you can use the Change User drop-down menu to switch to their Lesson Plan Book and use the calendar or date folders to pull up their plans.

3. One of my columns is much larger than the rest, how did this happen and how can I fix it?

In the over sized column, there is an unbroken string of characters, like a long website URL or a list with no spaces (see image). The column is stretching to accommodate this string.
Simply break it up with a space, and the columns will re-adjust.

4. My homework is not displaying on my teacher website, but I can see it in the Lesson Planner; why isn't it appearing?

Homework is not posted publicly until the day the lesson is to be taught. By default, the post time is 2PM, however, each district may choose it's own post time.

When working in your own calendar, you can click the View Public Calendar button (shown below) to see what parents/ students currently have access to.

If you'd like to post an assignment right away, you can create a calendar event that will appear immediately. Simply open your calendar (using the Calendar tab), click in the correct date, and
fill out the Add Event form.

5. I've reached the end of my four columns, but I need more. How do I add more columns?

In each week of lesson plans, you have 5 pages to use. On each page are four columns.

You are only seeing four columns because you are on "Page 1".
To get four more columns, switch to "Page 2" from the Pages drop-down menu (see image).

Alternatively, select "All Pages" from the drop-down menu, and you'll see all available columns (see image).

6. My lesson plans are printing on multiple pages. What are my options for shrinking the print job so it takes up less paper?

Background Study: Many teachers have called OnCourse to find out why the lesson plans in OnCourse seem to print on more pages than if they were written in another program like Microsoft Word. The OnCourse Support Team tested this theory, and copied each lesson plan block manually out of OnCourse and into a plain Microsoft document. The result was that the print jobs were almost exactly the same length, with the OnCourse export actually being shorter once they were put on a landscape page.

Since we know that OnCourse's export is as efficient as any alternative, here are a few tips to shrink the print job:

1. If you don't mind the text being smaller on your computer screen, re-do your OnCourse template with a smaller font so that any print/export job will take up less space.

2. If one of your classes consistently has longer lesson plans, use the Settings button to give that column more space on the page.

3. If you are printing a day's worth of plans for a substitute, use the "Daily View" instead of the "weekly View" (the View drop-down menu is on the toolbar above the plan grid).

4. Instead of printing directly to your printer, export to Word instead. From Word, there are many different ways to shrink the job, such as: change the page layout to landscape; make the page margins smaller; adjust the grid or fonts for space efficiency; apply scaling or zooming features.

7. I wrote my lesson plans, but I logged in and can't find them. What happened and how can I retrieve those plans?

When plans are lost, there are typically two major reasons:

1. The plans were written in the wrong week, or mistakenly written into a template.

The best place to start is using the Search Plans button. This feature will search all of your lesson plans for a keyword of your choosing. Choose a keyword that you know was in those plans,
run the search, and if the plans have been mistakenly misplaced into a different week, you'll find them quickly.

2. The plans were inadvertently deleted, or a template was loaded over them.

If the plans were actually deleted, you will be able to get them back; provided that you've clicked Save at least once while working on them.

Open the lesson plan block where the plan used to be, and click the Undo Changes tab. You'll see any plan that's been saved and deleted. Click Restore These Plans to bring them back,
and perform these steps for each missing plan.