[sims] Creating a report with Marksheet data

[cn198]

Hi All,

 

I'm just learning to use SIMS so please go easy on me!

 

Presently I am viewing data in Marksheets, and it's all categorised into year groups and classes. So for example, each class in each year has it's marksheet entry. Within these marksheets is a number of grades I'm using to monitor the pupils performance. At the moment I'm opening each marksheet for a class, exporting it to Excel, and copying the data into a master spreadsheet to analyse the year group data in one go. So my question is, this is very fiddly having to export and copy data for every class. Is there some easier way to do this in one go? I was hoping that I could somehow create a year group Report, allowing me to select columns like "Pupil Name", "Gender", "Reg group" but then also columns relating to the grades from the marksheets I'm interested in? At the moment I can't find any way of doing that.

 

I hope that makes sense.

 

Chris

[vikpaw]

@cn198

 

You can make a report but they get very fiddly very quickly, it will depend on your naming structure for the aspects that hold the grades and whether you've used resultsets in the marksheet.

 

It makes sense to use resultsets, the normal way is to use them to tie the data down to a particular point in time / collection period. e.g. Y7 Term1, or Spring Y8. This when coupled with the aspect makes the data held easy to identify. There are a couple of threads that go into best practise on Assessment Manager. This one and it has some links to others : http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/60161-aspects-assessment-manager.html#post545370

 

However, to quickly resolve your immediate problem. When you create the marksheet for the class, in the template edit screen, you can also create a marksheet for a year group, it's higher up the tree. So you can see the whole year group at once. This by default will be available for the HoY.

 

If when you say class, you mean, a subject class, you can do that too. Instead of choosing a specific class from under the course part of the tree if you click on the top section that just says the course name, it will make a marksheet for the Head of Department. You will higher up the template screen, need to specify the course link, so it knows which course to link it to, and also to specify a group filter, otherwise you'll get all year groups present in a course e.g. Y10/11 for KS4. 7/8/9 for KS3 etc.

 

Once you create these whole year / course marksheets you can export the date in bulk to Excel if you wish.

You could also create a multi-subject marksheet if you wanted, and apparently in a coming update the limit on the number of columns will be lifted which always made it difficult to fit everything on.

Edited March 19, 2013 by vikpaw

[cn198]

Hi vikpaw, many thanks for your reply. I'm too new to SIMS to understand a lot of what you're recommending. I'm the Head of Department for English, and we have a "Data Manager" at my school who sets up everything on SIMS for us. At the moment, my interaction with SIMS is pretty much just going into Marksheets and entering results. I don't really know how to use resultsets and certainly wouldn't be able to set up new Marksheets. And the issue I have is that I go to the Data Manager to ask for help and get told promptly he has no time to help and I need to cope! So basically I have to manage with what I have.

 

So basically my year 10 English are split into 10 sets, and each teacher is filling in assessment results and predicted grades in these set marksheets. At the moment I'm finding it a pain to extract this data from the marksheets for the whole year group, I have to go into each set marksheet and click "export". Is there any guide you could provide to help me achieve this goal, or walk me through what you're outlining? Sorry for being a pain!

 

Alternatively, I know how to design and generate reports, you say it's fiddly, but I don't mind that as long as it's possible?

[number34]

the issue I have is that I go to the Data Manager to ask for help and get told promptly he has no time to help and I need to cope

 

Ridiculous! It will take the data manager a second to add either a year group, or better still, a course marksheet with group filter to the template. Go back and ask, if you still get the same reply then complain to their line manager.

[cn198]

The data manager is assistant head and I'm new to the job, I don't really want to push the issue. Is there anyone that can help?

[QWERTY72]

HI cn198

Do you have a Head of Year for your Year 10 students? Does he get marksheets for the whole year group? If yes, as an interim solution, you could ask him/her to export his marksheet with the data you are interested in into Excel and forward it to you. but really, as number34 said, for a data manager it is a dead easy and quick job to set you up. But maybe you have an assessment assistant/operator in your school that would be able to set you up in Course Manager as Head of Department for English and then create a marksheet for the course "English" so that you could see all KS4 students and filter it down to the students you need?

[vikpaw]

As #34 said, it's an easy enough task if the DM knows what they're doing to just set up teh right marksheets!!!

 

If you have access to SupportNet you can download some reports from there, i uploaded a few a while back. However, you might not have permission to import them.

 

In terms of making a report, one way is to do this:

start on student focus, pull in the fields you want.

scroll to bottom and click on assessment results, then pick all the info you want there, most likely result and aspect name, maybe resultset.

then click on teh row with blue icon called assessment results, (in teh right hand panel that lists your database fields you've chosen)

you should get new icons on the right margin.

click on the red one to create a sub report on the assessment results table. (it appears below the data fields)

here you can specify filtering criteria on the subtable e.g. aspect name contains 'english'.

add some filters and test the output.

 

this is where it gets fiddly as the naming convention could hinder you. it will also be useful if the system is set up with resultsets so you can narrow it down.

 

have a go, then let us know if it goes wrong and we can troubleshoot from there.

[cn198]

Hi vikpaw, just been having a play, and yes, my god I can see what you mean by the fact it gets messy! But actually that gives me exactly what I want. As long as I put the name of the results I'm looking for as filters, and filter the specific year group on the student focus, it brings out the data I'm looking for. Thanks so much, would never have got there on my own. And in slower time I will look to get a meeting with the data manager to outline what I would like and hopefully get the group templates up and running. So thanks for everyone's advice! :-)

[vikpaw]

Yay ) good job. Keep playing with SIMS, and soon you'll be permanently in charge of it

We could run a book to see how long it takes before you're doing the same for every other HoD!

[cn198]

Only if they reduce my teaching hours!!

 

I've had time for a proper play with the reports now. And I def want to iterate your comments about it being messy at this level! Listing results for pupils in rows rather than columns is a bit of a pain, but I've written a VBA macro to convert it to columns so it's all good now.