Multi-Grade Apps
Building apps that serve multiple grade levels
Overview
Multi-grade apps serve students across different grade levels (e.g., grades 3-5). A common approach is to create a separate course for each grade, which makes it straightforward to track progress, gate content, and report outcomes per grade level.
Why Separate Courses?
A single course can work for multi-grade apps if your app handles grade logic internally.
However, separate courses per grade simplify several things:
- Progress tracking: Each course has its own completion percentage and XP total.
- Content gating: Enrollments naturally control what each student sees.
- Reporting: Educators get grade-specific dashboards without extra filtering.
The tradeoff is more up-front setup.
If your app already has robust internal grade logic, a single-course approach may work fine.
How It Works
When a student logs in, your app:
- Queries the student's enrollments
- Determines which courses they belong to
- Shows the appropriate content
- Records their activities against the appropriate course
Tips
- If a resource (like a video) works across multiple grades, you can create it once and link it to multiple courses via Component Resources. This avoids duplication while still tracking progress per course.
- Think through edge cases: What happens if a student is enrolled in multiple grades? What if they're not enrolled in any? Your app should handle these scenarios gracefully.