Word count and Lateness in Profiles 7

[mioiskute]

Hi there,

Is there anyway to set different word count for each section? For example, my Personal/French comment bank has 2 areas: French and General Comment. In French there are 2 sections and each section can have 60 words in it. General Comment just has one section can contain 120 words. Unfortunately, SIMS sets one word count for all the sections in a single comment bank .

I also want to add lateness in the report. I've tried Total lesson minutes late Field and Number of lessons late Field but both of these fields didn't work. I don't know why the lateness is base on lessons while student's register is taken in AM and PM.

[vikpaw]

Hiya, not sure about the wordcount / profiles thing, but have tried to use minutes late in an Individual Report from Assessment Manager and it didn't work.

The option is there, but it only works if you licence and use Lesson Monitor, hence the terminology 'total lesson minutes'.

So, i'm assuming you don't use lesson monitor, only the attendance module; in which case i don't think you can pull those values through.

Getting LM soon, so can try it out hopefully. . .

[mioiskute]

Thanks for your help!
Unfortunately our school doesn’t have Lesson Monitor at the moment. I’m wondering is there any additional tag that can show the lateness percent or number of lates?!

[vikpaw]

Not easily, so i'd go for one of two rather complicated work arounds:

1) DIY your own field for lates.
Set up your own marksheet with a column for minutes late, and then export formatted to Excel. Run the attendance report for minutes late - Reports|Attendance|Selected Pupil Reports|Minutes Late Report which outputs to web browser. Copy and paste the total minutes late column into the exported spreadsheet. You need to make sure the list of students is the same for both reports etc. etc. may involve some manual mapping. Once that's done you can reimport the spreadsheet and then use the aspect from the marksheet in individual reports like any other tag.

It's a bit fiddly, but could work really well.

2) Send home full attendance certificates.
If you run the registration certificate report, this includes the number of L marks received, and when. Compares to total possible marks and gives a percentage. Some may think showing the fishbone is too much info for parents but i think it's great. Downside is it doesn't give you exact minutes late and you have to generate them manually and then merge them with output from Profiles, unless it's possible to pull it in somehow, i doubt it. -
Reports|Attendance|Individual Pupil Reports|Registration Certificate Report or even just the Individual Session Summary Report.

We liked the output so much, especially the detailed one that you get when you click attendance from the student detail screen (it's full colour and has a pie chart plus daily attendance break down. . . .) that we sent those home. Big problem is that you can't bulk generate those fancy colour ones, they have to be called up one at a time, so we actually employ someone now to come in during reporting times to print them off by form and then collate them with the reports that we generate from Assessment Manager.

Roll on the days of Sims Learning Gateway, so parents can just access the data live!

[mioiskute]

This seems to be a good solution. I'll try to make it when I come to my office tomorrow

Thank you pretty much vikpaw!

[vikpaw]

How did you get on?

[mioiskute]

Not easily, so i'd go for one of two rather complicated work arounds:

1) DIY your own field for lates.
Set up your own marksheet with a column for minutes late, and then export formatted to Excel. Run the attendance report for minutes late - Reports|Attendance|Selected Pupil Reports|Minutes Late Report which outputs to web browser. Copy and paste the total minutes late column into the exported spreadsheet. You need to make sure the list of students is the same for both reports etc. etc. may involve some manual mapping. Once that's done you can reimport the spreadsheet and then use the aspect from the marksheet in individual reports like any other tag.

It's a bit fiddly, but could work really well.

Well I did try it. However, the marksheet doesn't show the values on the exported spreadsheet that I've edited and saved. So I tried another way that is importing data from Excel to my marksheet: Routiens/Data in/Assessment/Import From Spreadsheet (I had saved the Minutes Late Report as a .xml spreadsheet file) . But it takes time to select matching student's name. When I finished all the progress, my marksheet now shows the correct value and in my individual report also.

However, the value cannot update automatically because it's from a saved .xml file and it doesn't link to the system's database .

[vikpaw]

Yes, that's basically the way it has to work, you have to manually export the data and then re-import, so it's not live.

If you use that method, the best thing to do is set a fixed date for the report, usually the last day of the term or semester just before the reports go out. Export your data based on that date and then use it in the report.

I just tried it by saving the report as an xml file, but doesn't the data list each time the student is late separately? If so, it wont import the total minutes late will it...? i'm not sure how it will work if it matches multiple rows against a student, i guess it will just overwrite the previous data. You should check.

[mioiskute]

Actually, my report is not Minutes late report . Because I just want to view the percentage of late so I made my own report which shows the % Late. My xml file works nicely