SIS Part 2Instructional Services and Professional Development

TABLE OF CONTENTSTable of Contents........................................................................................................................................................... 2Basic Search..................................................................................................................................................................... 5Column Customization................................................................................................................................................. 5Sorting............................................................................................................................................................................... 6Paging................................................................................................................................................................................ 6Advanced Filter.............................................................................................................................................................. 6

Emails.................................................................................................................................................................... 7HTML formatting..............................................................................................................................................................................7Auto-logging....................................................................................................................................................................................... 7Multiple recipients...........................................................................................................................................................................7Templates............................................................................................................................................................................................ 7Variables.............................................................................................................................................................................................. 7

Top Level Functionalities............................................................................................................................... 9Find Teacher...................................................................................................................................................................................... 9Active Teachers.................................................................................................................................................................................9Sorting................................................................................................................................................................................................... 9Filtering................................................................................................................................................................................................ 9Paging.................................................................................................................................................................................................... 9Export to Excel.................................................................................................................................................................................. 9Filter Teachers................................................................................................................................................................................10All Teachers..................................................................................................................................................................................... 11Add Teacher..................................................................................................................................................................................... 11

Detailed Level Functionalities.................................................................................................................... 11Teacher Main Page...................................................................................................................................................... 12

Basic Information..........................................................................................................................................................................12Sections.............................................................................................................................................................................................. 12Schools............................................................................................................................................................................................... 12Reporting to Teachers................................................................................................................................................................12Managing Teachers......................................................................................................................................................................13Edit Information............................................................................................................................................................................ 13View Calendar................................................................................................................................................................................. 13View Notes........................................................................................................................................................................................13Add Note............................................................................................................................................................................................ 14Current Enrollments....................................................................................................................................................................14Associate to School....................................................................................................................................................................... 14Mentoring......................................................................................................................................................................................... 15Enrollment History....................................................................................................................................................................... 15Contact History...............................................................................................................................................................................16

Student Activity............................................................................................................................................................ 16

Top Level Functionalities............................................................................................................................. 17Find Course...................................................................................................................................................................................... 17Active Courses................................................................................................................................................................................ 17Sorting................................................................................................................................................................................................ 17Filtering............................................................................................................................................................................................. 17

Paging................................................................................................................................................................................................. 17Export to Excel................................................................................................................................................................................ 17Filter Courses.................................................................................................................................................................................. 18All Courses........................................................................................................................................................................................ 19Add Course....................................................................................................................................................................................... 19Catalog................................................................................................................................................................................................ 19Display Name.................................................................................................................................................................................. 19LMS ID................................................................................................................................................................................................ 19

Detailed Level Functionalities.................................................................................................................... 19Course Main Page..........................................................................................................................................................................19Basic Information..........................................................................................................................................................................20Sections.............................................................................................................................................................................................. 20Edit Information............................................................................................................................................................................ 20View Calendar................................................................................................................................................................................. 20Add Section...................................................................................................................................................................................... 20Name................................................................................................................................................................................................... 20Term.................................................................................................................................................................................................... 21Cap....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 21Weeks................................................................................................................................................................................................. 21Affiliation.......................................................................................................................................................................................... 21Link...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 21Merging Sections........................................................................................................................................................................... 21Enrollment History....................................................................................................................................................................... 22Current Enrollments....................................................................................................................................................................22Student Activity..............................................................................................................................................................................23

Top Level Functionalities............................................................................................................................. 24Find Section..................................................................................................................................................................................... 24Active Sections................................................................................................................................................................................ 24Sorting............................................................................................................................................................................................... 24Filtering............................................................................................................................................................................................ 24Paging................................................................................................................................................................................................ 24Export to Excel..............................................................................................................................................................................24Filter Sections................................................................................................................................................................................. 25All Sections........................................................................................................................................................................................25

Detailed Level Functionalities.............................................................................................................. 26Section Main Page....................................................................................................................................................... 26

Basic Information........................................................................................................................................................................26Enrollments....................................................................................................................................................................................26Edit Information........................................................................................................................................................................... 26View Calendar................................................................................................................................................................................. 27Enrollment Events.......................................................................................................................................................................27Enrollment History......................................................................................................................................................................27Current Enrollments................................................................................................................................................................... 28Student Activity............................................................................................................................................................................. 28Bulk Transfer.................................................................................................................................................................................. 29Statistics............................................................................................................................................................................................ 30Ratings............................................................................................................................................................................................... 31Test History.....................................................................................................................................................................................32

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Communications by User and Type.....................................................................................................................................32Communications by Date and Type....................................................................................................................................32Communication List.................................................................................................................................................................... 32Teacher Activity............................................................................................................................................................................ 32Student Activity..............................................................................................................................................................................33Contact History.............................................................................................................................................................................. 33Student Export............................................................................................................................................................................... 33

Report Builder................................................................................................................................................ 35Query Builder..................................................................................................................................................................................37Run Report.......................................................................................................................................................................................38Subscription.................................................................................................................................................................................... 38

Enrollment’s ModuleThe Enrollments module is very useful as it tracks all current enrollments and lets the users select a set of enrollments matching some kind of criteria. The following functionalities are available in this module:

BASIC SEARCHThis page will let users find all enrollments matching some criteria, such as being associated with a particular school or with an average grade within a particular range. Multiple filters can be combined, and The SIS will display a list of all enrollments matching the search criteria.

The list of filters in this module is very comprehensive, including data about pacing, login activity and start dates. For instance, users could ask to see all students less than 2 weeks from their end dates who are behind their scheduled pace.

The figure below shows a sample Basic Search page, where all enrollments in the Algebra 1 course with Johannes Kepler are displayed. For each enrollment, this page will display detailed enrollment information such as start and end dates, current average grade and weeks left.

COLUMN CUSTOMIZATIONAs with the applications and students pages, the enrollment list also lets users select what columns they would like to see. For instance, by default the enrollment page may display the

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student end date, but one user may rather see the student’s completed assignment. Using the Customize Columns functionality, each user can tell The SIS what columns he/she would like to see, which will be saved as a user preference in the database.

SORTINGClicking on a column header will sort the table according to that column. Sorting takes place in the client-side, i.e., the table sorting is very fast.

PAGINGIn order to optimize the performance, if there are too many enrollments in the system The SIS will only show the first 1,000 enrollments, and users will be able to see the next 1,000 enrollments by navigating to the next page.

ADVANCED FILTERWhile the Basic Search page is faster to use and will suffice in most cases, users may need to generate a list of enrollments according to a different, specific criteria. For instance, users may want to generate a list of enrollments where the course name contains “alg”.

As shown below this page will let users specify an enrollment field to be searched (such as course name or current grade), the criteria (such as “containing” or “starting with”) and the value to be used. For instance, users may select all enrollments where the average grade is less than “80” and where the teacher name contains “alfred”.

Users may save the filtering criteria by giving it a name and clicking on the “Save” button. This way, the user may select the exact same criteria in the future by selecting the criteria name in the bottom drop-down and clicking on “Load”.

EmailsIt is in the Enrollments module that the email functionality provides unparalleled power to users. For instance, a user may select all students taking Algebra 1 with Albert Sabin, or all students who have not submitted any work in the last two weeks, and send them all an email. The email itself may either be a static text or a dynamically built text, as explained below

The email page, shown on has the following features:

HTML formattingThe email message is HTML-based, i.e., users may use different fonts, bullets, colors and formatting.

Auto-loggingAny email sent from within The SIS gets automatically added to the communication log of theappropriate student.

Multiple recipientsIf desired, the message can be copied to the student guardian (if applicable) and to the local schoolcounselor (also called Affiliation) by checking the appropriate checkbox(es).

TemplatesThe SIS has the concept of templates, which are pre-defined emails that can be sent to students. By selecting a template from the drop-down, the email content will be automatically pre-populated with the template contents. This functionality is made even more powerful by letting users edit existing templates, so that minor changes can be made in order to send a customized email to a student while keeping the consistency. Templates are often used together with variables, as described below.

VariablesInstead of hand-typing static values such as the student name or the school name, users can use pre-defined variables by selecting a variable from the dropdown. This will add the selected variable to the cursor position. For instance, selecting [COURSE_NAME] will automatically add the course name when the email is sent, similar to what a Microsoft Word Mail Merge would do.

For instance, let’s assume we have a template defined as “Hello [FIRST_NAME], your current grade on your [COURSE_NAME] course is [CURRENT_GRADE]”. If we select two students in the Basic Search page, and then use the template to send an email to the students, the first student could get an email saying “Hello John, your current grade on your Algebra 1 course is 90” while the second student would get an email saying “Hello Mary, your current grade on your Biology 1 course is 85”. This makes communicating with a group of students very easy, fast and intuitive.

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Clicking on the “update sample” link will show how the final email will look like, and clicking on“Send” will send the email.

Teacher’s Module The Teachers module tracks all data related to teachers. This module has two levels: one top level where users can see a list of teachers and/or find a specific teacher; and a detailed level, where users can see detailed information about a selected teacher.

Top Level FunctionalitiesThese functionalities are available when the user goes into the Teacher module.

Find TeacherThis page will let users find a teacher by typing a few letters of the teacher’s name. The SIS will dynamically show a list of all teachers where the teacher’s name contains the typed letters. For instance, typing “joh” will show teachers “John Lennon” and “Mark Johnson”. Users can then select a teacher from the list and click on “Go” to access that teacher.

Active TeachersThis page will let users see all teachers currently active, and clicking on a teacher will take the user to that teacher’s main page. This page has a few noteworthy functionalities:

SortingClicking on a column header will sort the table according to that column. Sorting takes place in theclient-side, i.e., the table sorting is very fast.

FilteringOn the top of the table there is a field where users can type a few letters to search for a teacher. The SIS will then only show teachers having that string in their names. Filtering also takes place in the client-side, i.e., it is very fast.

PagingIn order to optimize the performance, if there are too many teachers in the system The SIS will only show the first 1,000 teachers, and users will be able to see the next 1,000 teachers by navigating to the next page.

Export to ExcelThe list of active teachers can be exported to Excel by clicking on the “Export to Excel” button in

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the top portion of the screen.

Filter TeachersThis page will let users find all teachers matching some criteria, such as teaching in a particular school or teaching a particular course. Multiple filters can be combined, and The SIS will display a list of all teachers matching the search criteria.

The illustration shows a sample Filter Teacher page, where all Active teachers teaching a course in New York Virtual Academy are displayed.

All TeachersThis page is similar to the Active Teachers page, with the only difference being that this page will show all teachers and not only the active ones.

Add TeacherThis page will let users manually create a teacher by entering the teacher’s information. The teacher profile will be created, in addition to an account that can be used by the teacher to access The SIS.

Detailed Level FunctionalitiesOnce a teacher is selected in the top level (as described above), the following functionalities will be available:

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TEACHER MAIN PAGE

The teacher main page will give the user an overview about the teacher. As can be seen below there are 5 collapsible panels on this page, i.e., clicking on the minus sign next to each panel will collapse that panel.

Basic InformationThis panel will display some basic teacher information, such as name, office hours and picture.

SectionsHere users can see the list of sections currently being taught by this teacher including thenumber of enrollments in each section and the section term.

SchoolsTeachers can be associated with a particular school, in case they should only be allocated tosections of that school. This panel will display the schools this teacher is currently associated with. If there are no schools (the default), the teacher may teach a section of any school.

Reporting to TeachersThe SIS implements the concept of teacher mentoring, by which a teacher may report to another teacher. This panel will show who the teachers this teacher reports to are.

Managing TeachersSimilar to the “Reporting to Teachers” panel, this panel will show who the teachers that reportto this teacher are.

Edit InformationThis page will display the complete teacher information, such as the Bio and the office hours. Users can edit these fields, if required. For instance, if a teacher changes address, this information would be changed on this page.

The teacher Bio information, Picture and Office Hours will be displayed in the CourseInformation page, which is available to students in their portal.

View CalendarThe SIS offers a calendar with 7 levels of events (Global, School, Affiliation, Course, Section, Teacher and Student). This page will show the teacher calendar, including all events associated with that teacher.

On this page, users can manually add an event to the teacher calendar by clicking on the “Add new event” link or delete an existing event by selecting an event from the dropdown and clicking on the “delete” button. This event will be displayed to all students taking a course with this teacher.

View NotesThe SIS can also track notes related to a teacher. This would work like a repository of notes associated with a teacher, such as conversations with a mentor.

Clicking on the document icon in the left column will open up a window with detailed information about the note entry. Users will also be able to edit the note on that page.

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Add NoteThe Add note page will let users manually add an entry to the teacher notes. Users will be able to select a category, a subject and enter the contents to be recorded. The date is automatically filled-out with the current time, although it can be overridden if desired.

Current EnrollmentsThis page will show details about the teacher’s current enrollments, including the student name, start and end dates, the section, the average grade and number of assignments completed.

Users can manually change the start and/or end dates, the current grade and/or the number of assignments completed by clicking on the edit icon. Users can also drop the student from a course or set it to completed by selecting one or multiple courses and clicking on the “Drop selected” or “Complete selected” buttons.

Upon completion or drop, The SIS will automatically send a template email to the student confirming the completion or drop. The templates used, AUTO_COURSE_COMPLETION and AUTO_COURSE_DROP, can be edited in the Administration module.

Associate to SchoolAs described above, teachers may be associated with a specific school, in case he/she should only teach sections of that school. Users can associate a teacher to a school on this page by selecting a school from a dropdown and clicking on the “Add” button. Existing associations can be removed as well.

MentoringOn this page, teachers can be assigned a mentor or can be assigned as a mentor to other teachers. Users can make this association be selecting a teacher from the dropdown and clicking on the “Add” button. Existing associations can be removed as well.

Enrollment HistoryThis page will show all courses taken by students with this teacher, including the enrolment dates, final grade and status. Users can filter the list of courses by selecting a period (such as courses taken in the last 6 months) or a status (such as courses that were dropped by the student).

This page can be used to edit past courses taken by students. For instance, if a final grade needs to be retroactively changed, users would edit the entry on this page, which would automatically update the student’s transcript and transcript analysis pages.

Users can edit the final grade, the number of assignments completed, the number of credits earned and whether that course should be displayed in the transcript.

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Contact HistoryThis page will show, for each enrollment associated with the selected teacher, when was the last time the student was contacted and when was the last time the student submitted work (if this information is tracked and reported by the LMS).

This page can be useful to track how often the teacher is contacting his/her students. It is also a useful page for teachers to see, at-a-glance, whether their students are working as they should and whether there is a correlation between contacting the student and the student submitting work.

STUDENT ACTIVITYOn this page, users can see how often students are working on their courses. Users can generate a report based on a list of pre-defined time periods ranging from 1 day to 2 months or a customized time-frame. The student activity report shows how many minutes the student spent on courses with this teacher. Only students enrolled with the selected teacher will be displayed.-

Course’s ModuleThe Courses module tracks all data related to courses. This module has two levels: one top level where users can see a list of courses and/or find a specific course; and a detailed level, where users can see detailed information about a selected course.

Top Level FunctionalitiesThese functionalities are available when the user goes into the Courses module:

Find CourseThis page will let users find a course by typing a few letters of the course’s name. The SIS will dynamically show a list of all courses where the name contains the typed letters. For instance, typing “alg” will show courses “Algebra 1” and “Pre-algebra”. Users can then select a course from the list and click on “Go” to access that course.

Active CoursesThis page will let users see all courses currently active, and clicking on a course will take the user to that course’s main page. This page has a few noteworthy functionalities:

SortingClicking on a column header will sort the table according to that column. Sorting takes place in theclient-side, i.e., the table sorting is very fast.

FilteringOn the top of the table there is a field where users can type a few letters to search for a course. The SIS will then only show courses having that string in their names. Filtering also takes place in the client-side, i.e., it is very fast.

PagingIn order to optimize the performance, if there are too many courses in the system The SIS will only show the first 1,000 courses, and users will be able to see the next 1,000 courses by navigating to the next page.

Export to ExcelThe list of active courses can be exported to Excel by clicking on the “Export to Excel” button in the top portion of the screen.

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Filter CoursesThis page will let users find all courses matching some criteria, such as belonging to a particular catalog or with a section in a particular term. Multiple filters can be combined, and The SIS will display a list of all courses matching the search criteria.

The figure below shows a sample Filter Courses page, where all Active courses from the Electives department are displayed.

All CoursesThis page is similar to the Active Courses page, with the only difference being that this page will show all courses and not only the active ones.

Add CourseThis page will let users manually create a course by entering the course information. The following fields are noteworthy:

CatalogEach course may be associated with a Catalog, although a school may decide to have a singlecatalog. This information is only used for reporting purposes, so that users can see, for instance, how many enrollments took place in courses from Catalog A.

Display NameThis may or may not be the same as the course name, and is displayed by The SIS in thetranscript. This can be useful when multiple courses are created (such as Algebra 1A andAlgebra 1B) but they should both appear as the same in the student transcript.

If desired, each course can have a cap set so that once the number is reached no additional enrollments can be created in the course. Caps can also be setup in the Section level. The cap is a revolving cap, i.e., it specifies the maximum number of enrollments that can be added to a course at any particular time.

LMS IDA course may be associated with an LMS Master term. This information would be needed in case sections were to be automatically created in the LMS.

Detailed Level FunctionalitiesOnce a course is selected in the top level (as described above), the following functionalities will be available:

Course Main PageThe course main page will give the user an overview about the course. As can be seen in figure 11.4, there are 2 collapsible panels on this page, i.e., clicking on the minus sign next to each panel will collapse that panel.

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Basic InformationThis panel will display some basic course information, such as name and department.

SectionsHere users can see the list of sections of this course including the number of enrollments in that section, the teacher name and the section term.

Edit InformationThis page will display the complete course information, such as the display name and the department. Users can edit these fields, if required. For instance, if a course needs to be set to inactive, this information would be changed on this page.

View CalendarThe SIS offers a calendar with 7 levels of events (Global, School, Affiliation, Course, Section, Teacher and Student). This page will show the course calendar, including all events associated with that course.

On this page, users can manually add an event to the course calendar by clicking on the “Add new event” link or delete an existing event by selecting an event from the dropdown and clicking on the “delete” button. This event will be displayed to all students taking this course.

Whenever a new course is created, a default pacing will be created. The number of weeks for this default pacing is defined by the DEFAULT_WEEKS parameter, and each week will by default have one assignment due.

Add SectionThis page will let users manually create a section of the selected course by entering the section information.

NameThe section name may be automatically assigned by The SIS based on the course name and

on the number of existing sections of that course in that term.

TermA section is assigned to a school via the Term. By selecting a term, the user is automatically assigning the section to both a semester and a school, as a Term is basically a combination of a school and a semester.

CapIf desired, each section can have a cap set so that once the number is reached no additionalenrollments can be created in the section. The cap is a revolving cap, i.e., it specifies the maximum number of enrollments that can be added to a section at any particular time.

WeeksThe section duration is used as a default value, so that when a student is enrolled and a start date is specified, the end date can be automatically assigned. However, each individual enrollment can be changed to have a different duration. If the enrollment duration is changed, the pacing will be changed accordingly. For instance, if a section has a default duration of 18 weeks but a particular student is enrolled with a duration of 20 weeks in that section, the 20 weeks pacing will be used.

AffiliationIf desired, a section can be associated with an affiliation. This can be used for reportingpurposes.

LinkIf The SIS is integrated with an LMS through a Single Sign On (SSO), the link field can be used to take the student directly from the The SIS section page to the LMS section page. This information will be used in the “Go To Course” link available in the Course Information page in the Student Portal, as described in section 4.

Merging SectionsIn some cases, users may want to avoid creating multiple sections in the LMS while keepingthem separate in the The SIS. For instance, the school may have an Honors section and a regular section, which would share the same content but have different lengths. In this scenario, the school might decide to have a single section in the LMS (as the content is the same) but two separate sections in the SIS. Checking this box will prevent the SIS from creating a separate section in the LMS, instead pointing all enrollments to the section this new section is being merged with. For instance, if a section A exists in the LMS and in the SIS and a new section B is created in the SIS as being merged with section A, any enrollment in section B will be sent to section A in the LMS.

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Enrollment History

This page will show all enrollments in this course, regardless of status, including the enrolment dates, final grade and status. Users can filter the list of enrollments by selecting a period (such as enrollments taken in the last 6 months) or a status (such as enrollments that were dropped by the students).

Current Enrollments

This page will show details about the course’s current enrollments, including the student name, start and end dates, the section, the average grade and number of assignments completed.

Users can manually change the start and/or end dates, the current grade and/or the number of assignments completed by clicking on the edit icon. Users can also drop the student from a course or set it to completed by selecting one or multiple courses and clicking on the “Drop selected” or “Complete selected” buttons.

Upon completion or drop, The SIS will automatically send a template email to the student confirming the completion or drop. The templates used, AUTO_COURSE_COMPLETION and AUTO_COURSE_DROP, can be edited in the Administration module

Upon enrollment, The SIS will automatically send a template email to the student confirming the enrollment details. The template used, AUTO_COURSE_REGISTRATION, can be edited in the Administration module

Student ActivityOn this page, users can see how often students are working on their courses. Users can generate a report based on a list of pre-defined time periods ranging from 1 day to 2 months or a customized time-frame. The student activity report shows how many minutes the student spent on the course. Only students enrolled in the selected course will be displayed.

The availability of this feature will depend on the LMS capability, as the student study time is measured in the LMS.

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Section’s Module

The Sections module tracks all data related to sections. This module has two levels: one top level where users can see a list of sections and/or find a specific section; and a detailed level, where users can see detailed information about a selected section.

Top Level FunctionalitiesThese functionalities are available when the user goes into the Sections module:

Find SectionThis page will let users find a section by typing a few letters of the section’s name. The SIS will dynamically show a list of all sections where the name contains the typed letters. For instance, typing “alg” will show sections of “Algebra 1” and “Pre-algebra”. Users can then select a section from the list and click on “Go” to access that section.

Active SectionsThis page will let users see all sections currently active, and clicking on a section will take the user to that section’s main page. This page has a few noteworthy functionalities:

SortingClicking on a column header will sort the table according to that column. Sorting takes place in theclient-side, i.e., the table sorting is very fast.

FilteringOn the top of the table there is a field where users can type a few letters to search for a section. The SIS will then only show sections having that string in their names. Filtering also takes place in the client-side, i.e., it is very fast.

PagingIn order to optimize the performance, if there are too many sections in the system The SIS will only show the first 1,000 sections, and users will be able to see the next 1,000 sections by navigating to the next page.

Export to ExcelThe list of active sections can be exported to Excel by clicking on the “Export to Excel” button in the top portion of the screen.

Filter SectionsThis page will let users find all sections matching some criteria, such as being associated to a particular course or school. Multiple filters can be combined, and The SIS will display a list of all sections matching the search criteria.

The illustration below shows a sample Filter Sections page, where all Active sections of Algebra 1 on the NewYork Virtual Academy school are displayed.

Figure 12.2 Filter Sections

All Sections

This page is similar to the Active Sections page, with the only difference being that this page will show all sections and not only the active ones.

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Detailed Level Functionalities

Once a section is selected in the top level (as described above), the following functionalities will be available:

SECTION MAIN PAGEThe section main page will give the user an overview about the section. As can be seen in the figure below there are 2 collapsible panels on this page, i.e., clicking on the minus sign next to each panel will collapse that panel.

Basic InformationThis panel will display some basic section information, such as name and course.

EnrollmentsThis panel will display a list of students currently enrolled in the selected section, including thestudent name, start and end date, current average grade and number of assignments.

Edit InformationThis page will display the complete section information, such as the display name and the teacher. Users can edit these fields, if required. For instance, if a section needs to be set to inactive, this information would be changed on this page.

View Calendar

The SIS offers a calendar with 7 levels of events (Global, School, Affiliation, Course, Section, Teacher and Student). This page will show the section calendar, including all events associated with that section.

On this page, users can manually add an event to the section calendar by clicking on the “Add new event” link or delete an existing event by selecting an event from the dropdown and clicking on the “delete” button. This event will be displayed to all students enrolled in this section.

Enrollment Events

The Enrollment Events is an enhanced calendar, which adds a powerful functionality for rolling enrollments. Figure 12.4 shows a sample Enrollment Events page.

The Enrollment Events functionality lets users specify events with a dynamic date, based on the enrollment start date. For instance, an enrollment event may be created and scheduled for 7 days after the start date. If John enrolls in the section with a start date of 09/01/2009, that event will show up on John’s calendar on 09/08/2009. Mary, who enrolls in the same section but with a start date of09/03/2009, will see that on her calendar on 09/10/2009.

This functionality is very useful to specify events that take place not in a pre-defined date, but a number of days after the start. For instance, the grace period for dropping a course may be 14 days after the start date, and by creating an enrollment event at 14 days, the grace period deadline would show up in the correct date on each student’s calendar.

Enrollment History

This page will show all enrollments in this section, regardless of status, including the enrolment dates, final grade and status. Users can filter the list of enrollments by selecting a period (such as enrollments taken in the last 6 months) or a status (such as enrollments that were dropped).

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Current Enrollments

This page will show details about the section’s current enrollments, including the student name, start and end dates, the section, the average grade and number of assignments completed.

Users can manually change the start and/or end dates, the current grade and/or the number of assignments completed by clicking on the edit icon. Users can also drop the student from a section or set it to completed by selecting one or multiple enrollments and clicking on the “Drop selected” or “Complete selected” buttons.

Upon completion or drop, The SIS will automatically send a template email to the student confirming the completion or drop. The templates used, AUTO_COURSE_COMPLETION and AUTO_COURSE_DROP, can be edited in the Administration module

Student Activity

On this page, users can see how often students are working on their sections. Users can generate a report based on a list of pre-defined time periods ranging from 1 day to 2 months or a customized time-frame. The student activity report shows how many minutes the student spent on the section. Only students enrolled in the selected section will be displayed.

The availability of this feature will depend on the LMS capability, as the student study time is measured in the LMS.

Bulk Transfer

In some cases, users may need to transfer students from a section to another. For instance, two sections may be combined due to low enrollment numbers, or due to a teacher not teaching that course anymore.

As described in section 8, students can be manually transferred from a section to another. However, if multiple students need to be transferred between sections, the Bulk Transfer is a much faster way to do it.

Using this functionality, users can select a destination section from a dropdown. By default, the course will be pre-selected to be the same course as the current section; however this can be overridden by the user.

Once the destination section is selected, users can select one or multiple students currently enrolled in the selected section and click on the “Transfer” button. This will cause all selected enrollments to be updated. The original Start and End dates will be kept. If The SIS is integrated to an LMS, the student will be automatically transferred in the LMS as well, however depending on the LMS the student work in the original section may be lost.

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Report’s ModuleThe Reports module lets users run reports using data available in the The SIS database.

When looking at a report, users can click on the “Add to favorites” link on the top portion of the screen. This will make this report accessible from the main dashboard once the user logs in.

Even though users can create and run customized reports, the following basic reports are available in theReports module by default:

This report will give the user an overview of the school, including number of students, courses, sections, teachers and users. It will also give detailed information about the number of applications and enrollments.

StatisticsThis report will provide statistics about courses and teachers.

For each teacher, The SIS will display the percentage of students behind the pace. For instance, if a teacher is currently teaching 50 students, and out of these 50 students 10 are behind pace, the percentage of students behind pace for this teacher is 20%. It does not matter how far behind pace the student is: as long as the student is at least one week behind pace, he/she will be counted.

The SIS will also display, for each teacher, the median grade and the standard deviation. This is useful to see how the teacher is doing overall, as a teacher with too high or too low medians may indicate the need for further analysis.

The SIS will display similar statistics for Courses, i.e., the percentage of students behind pace in that course, and the median grade / standard deviation in that course. The following figure shows a sample Statistics screen.

RatingsAs described on section 4, the school can enable a functionality where students can rate both their courses and their teachers. If this functionality is enabled, this report will show the average rating, in addition to the number of ratings, that each teacher and course received.

Data can be isolated to a particular semester (so that only ratings received in that semester are counted)or combined into a cumulative rating.

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Test HistoryAs described on section 8, The SIS also tracks test history, so that the school can keep records of ACTs, SATs and so on. This report will let users review the test history according to some criteria, such as results for tests taken between two specified dates or results for a particular test type. For each record, the system will show the student name, the test type, test results and the test date.

Communications by User and TypeAs described in section 8, The SIS tracks the communications between the school and its students. This report can be used to get an overview of the communications logged by users.

For each user, The SIS will display how many communications were logged in the selected period(by default, the last month).

Communications by Date and TypeSimilar to the previous report, this report will give an overview of the communications logged by users, grouped by date and type.

For each day in the selected period, The SIS will display how many communications were logged, grouped by communication type.

Communication ListThis report will let the user see a list of communications matching some criteria, such as containing a particular text, created by a specific user or assigned to a specific category. Figure 13.2 shows a sample communication list.

Teacher Activity

The SIS tracks login activity for its users. Every time a user logs in, The SIS stores the amount of time spent by that user in The SIS. This report shows, for each teacher, how many minutes were spent in The SIS during the selected period. The figure below shows a sample Teacher Activity report.

Student Activity

If the LMS used tracks the amount of time spent by the students in their courses, and can also export that information to The SIS, this report will show, for each student, the amount of time they spent logged in during the selected period. Users can filter students by school and/or affiliation.

Contact History

The SIS tracks, for each student, the last time they have completed an activity in the LMS (assuming the LMS reports that information) and the last time the teacher contacted each of his/her students.

This report will show, for each enrollment, the enrollment information (including student, section, start and end dates and academic progress), how many days have elapsed since the last activity recorded for that student in that section, and when the last contact was made with that student. If no activity was recorded for the student in that section yet, the report will display the enrollment start date. The “Last Contact” column will display the last contact made by any user, not necessarily the teacher assigned to that enrollment.

Student Export

This report will let users export student data. Users can dynamically select what fields should be exported, and what filtering criteria should be applied.

The report is broken into 4 steps:

Step 1: Select fieldsHere the user will be able to select what fields should be exported by selecting one or multiple

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fields from the left list and clicking on the “>>” button to move them to the list of selected fields. If a field is selected by mistake, selecting the field on the right list and clicking on the “<<” button will unselect the field.

Step 2: Filtering criteria (Optional)If the user does not want to export data for all students, this step can be used to identify what students should be exported. Users can use a combination of up to 5 different filters to specify the criteria, such as students where the name contains “joh” or where the ZIP code is “33327”.

Step 3: Get DataOnce the fields and criteria are selected, users can click on the “Get Data” button to retrieve all the data. The actual data will be displayed in the bottom of the page, i.e., after step 4.

Step 4: Save as a Report (Optional)If the same fields and/or criteria are to be used again, users can save the combination of fields and criteria by entering a report name and an optional description. This will make the report available under the “Run report” page, described later on this document.

Report BuilderWhile the Student Export report will let users export data about students, often additional data needs to be exported. For instance, users may need to see all courses students were enrolled in, or the final grades for a particular course. The Report Builder can be used on these cases to generate a comprehensive report. Users can dynamically select what fields should be exported, and what filtering criteria should be applied.

The report is broken into 4 steps:

Step 1: Select fieldsHere the user will be able to select what fields should be exported by selecting one or multiple fields from each of the lists. Holding the “ctrl” key in the keyboard while clicking on a field will add that field to the selection, allowing users to select multiple fields. Users can select fields from the Student data, Enrollment data, Section data, Course data and Teacher data.

Step 2: Filtering criteria (Optional)If the user does not want to export data for all enrollments, this step can be used to identify

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what enrollments should be exported. Users can use a combination of up to 5 different filters to specify the criteria, such as enrollments where the course name contains “alg”.

Step 3: Get DataOnce the fields and criteria are selected, users can click on the “Get Data” button to retrieve all the data. The actual data will be displayed in the bottom of the page, i.e., after step 4.

Step 4: Save as a Report (Optional)If the same fields and/or criteria are to be used over and over, users can save the combination of fields and criteria by entering a report name and an optional description. This will make the report available under the “Run report” page, described later in this document.

Query BuilderUsers will sometimes need to run specific, customized reports that cannot be created using the Report Builder. For instance, some grouping may need to be performed, or some dynamic filtering may be used.

For these cases, The SIS offers a Query Builder, which will let users dynamically create a query to be used as a basis of the report. This query must conform to standard T-SQL syntax, so an advanced technical knowledge of SQL is required and typically this report would be used by the technical users, such as members from the IT department.

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Once the query is created and tested, users may save it as a report, including a name and a description. This report will then be available to other users under the “Run report” page, described below.

Run ReportThis page will let users run previously saved reports by selecting a report from the dropdown and clicking on the “Run Report” button. Once a report is selected, a report description will be shown, in addition to the actual query being used in that report. Users cannot modify an existing report.

SubscriptionThe concept of Subscription is defined as data that needs to be sent periodically to one or multiple recipients. For instance, the school principal may want to receive an email every Monday with the number of communications entered by each staff member. Or a marketing officer may need to know how many applications where received in the previous month.

Users can create a subscription by specifying its periodicity, the recipients and the data to be sent.

The main subscription page will display a list of existing subscriptions, which can be edited by clicking on the “edit” icon in the left side of the row.

A new subscription may be created by clicking on the “Add new subscription” link. This will open a dialog where users can enter:

Subscription name, which can be used to later identify the subscription; Periodicity, which can be selected from a dropdown with options such as EVERY_DAY,

EVERY_FRIDAY and EVERY_1ST_OF_MONTH; Recipients, which would be a list of email addresses for the people who should receive the

data; Template, which is the template to be used to present the data. The template is HTML based, so

it can use HTML formatting such as different fonts, bullets and colors.

When creating or editing the template, users can specify how the data will be sent by selecting an option from a dropdown with the following options:

Value, when a single text value is sent Table, when a table is sent in the email body Attachment, when a table is sent as an attachment to the email

Once an option is selected, The SIS will automatically include the respective tags. For instance, if Value is selected, The SIS will insert the text [Value][/Value]. This indicates to the The engine that the data should be sent as a single text value. Inside the tags, users should specify the actual data to be sent using standard T-SQL language. For instance, if we wanted to have the count of students, the template would look something like [Value]select count(*) from students[/Value]. If we wanted to send a list of the students’ first name in the body of the email, the template would look something like

[Table]Select firstname from students[/Table]. Clicking on the “Preview” link will display how the data will look like, which is useful to make sure the syntax used is correct.

Static text can be added to the template as well. For instance, a template might look like this, where the first row is a static text and the second row indicates the data that should be embedded in the subscription:

“This is the list of students currently in our program as of today:[Table]select firstname, lastname from Students[/Table] “

As the creation of T-SQL queries requires some technical expertise, typically this functionality would be setup by the technical users, such as members from the IT department.

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