.. _Checking Student Progress and Issuing Certificates:

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Assign Final Grades and Issue Certificates
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.. This chapter will be renamed and expanded to include course wrap-up activities and best practices.

As you prepare for the end of your course, you can send students a :ref:`course
farewell<Course Farewell and Certificates>` email message.

To assign a final grade to each student enrolled in a course, you generate
grades after the **Course End Date** and **Time** have passed. See
:ref:`Access_grades`.
 
The final grades of a student in the course and the grading configuration you
set in Studio are used to determine whether the student has earned a Certificate
of Mastery for the course.

The process of issuing certificates is completed at edX: work with your edX
program manager to schedule a date to issue certificates and complete this
process.
 