[sims] SIMS compatible reporting software

[CaterinaAnna]

Not sure if this is the best forum in which to ask this - if it isn't please re-direct me.

 

We've used i2Q reports for several years, but now the powers that be would like a package capable of producing 'a more visual output for parents'. They've seen reports produced elsewhere that include attendance and behaviour graphs as well as colour-coded progress charts and so on. I suspect these were produced directly from that school's MIS - although I've no idea which one it was. We use SIMS, although, for historical reasons, not for assessment or reporting to parents (bar a connection to SIMS Learning Gateway). TPTB can see the sort of graphs they would like as part of the reports on the student details page and in SLG. Does any part of the SIMS system allow these to be included in a well-laid out, preferably customisable, pupil-level report with other information pulled from SIMS, imported en block (eg targets) and by individual staff (ie staff comments)?

 

If not, is there any package of which people are aware that does?

 

I've done the google thing, but too many things are coy about screen shots or exactly how well they integrate (or not) with an MIS.

 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Steven_Cleaver]

You could have a look at Insight from Tasc Software which has a nice Graphical for Parents and students feel especially for Attendance, Behaviour, Detentions, Exams Reports etc although am not to sure about Assessment as this may require this to be set up in SIM's Assessment to link through. There is a quick video on our Youtube off our website which gives you a look at screen shots Lode Heath School if you want a look if it is any help.

[Sylv3r]

We use SIMS Profiles for our student reports which links to assessment manager etc.

 

I don't think it will do pretty graphs etc but it will pull out attendance information - we show % attendance, number of late sessions and % absent in text form.

 

I think you can now set a traffic light system up so it will colour code the grades if they are on target, matching or under - or it may be due in the next profiles release I can't remember - we don't use the colours up to now.

 

The templates are based in Word so they are as customisable as you wish.

 

It's a bit of a pig to get working, but once it plays nicely it works pretty well.

[Steven_Cleaver]

Could also look at these guys as Welcome | CCCC - 4CSoftware have used there software which was a bit of work to setup but gave a good level of analysis once implemented, links to SIM's and now looks like it can produce some very graphical features, not sure if this would be available to parents though.

[PhilNeal]

You can get some great graphs out of the assessment suite. I will try to get a sample.

[CAM]

Please give us a guide, especially basic AM7 users who don't have Discover yet.

[CaterinaAnna]

Thank you all for suggestions - will follow up and pass on to relevant people.

 

(This is nth attempt - trying a different browser to see if I can escape the error message that has prevented me posting thanks until now.)

[CaterinaAnna]

Steven, from what I can see Insight is an online system - can you get multiple outputs from it too?

That's where the issue is: the parents can see attendance and behaviour graphs on slg, staff can see them on SIMS, but TPTB want them on the annual paper reports too.

Edited October 18, 2013 by CaterinaAnna
reply not threaded as expected, so making clear which post it is in reply to.

[CaterinaAnna]

To Steven again:

CCCC looks pretty and TPTB may be interested in that. Of course they'll want all the assessment stuff too, which means starting to use assessment manager.

Hooray! Been pushing for it to happen for years, but been given neither permission nor time. On the other hand ...

Yikes! Settting up from scratch in term time to match our current systems is a HUGE job.

[Steven_Cleaver]

Steven, from what I can see Insight is an online system - can you get multiple outputs from it too?

That's where the issue is: the parents can see attendance and behaviour graphs on slg, staff can see them on SIMS, but TPTB want them on the annual paper reports too.

 

@CaterinaAnna You are right is an online system hosted internally here not sure what you mean by multiple outputs. With Insight Parents, Staff and Students can access the same information so Attendance, Behaviour, Timetables, Exams and Reports. We use this instead of SLG as we felt it was easier to use and looked nicer particularly for Parents and Students all the info feeds from SIM’s, it is also cheaper than SLG although SLG gives you some extra functionality but we do this differently. The Reports we create in SIM’s and upload to the document Server these can then be viewed in Insight or downloaded or printed by Students, Staff or Parents anytime including past reports, we have now can paper less for two out of the three reports we produced except for about 20 parents again saving money.

We use SIM’s Assessment Manager for some Analysis but also use our own system we have developed that links from SIM’s for tracking and Intervention analysis and we also use SISRA but these are more for Staff and SLG but again feed off our data in SIM’s.

Not 100% sure this answers all your queries but feel free to ask anything else or as you are only in Coventry feel free to pop up and have a look if you would like.

[Steven_Cleaver]

To Steven again:

CCCC looks pretty and TPTB may be interested in that. Of course they'll want all the assessment stuff too, which means starting to use assessment manager.

Hooray! Been pushing for it to happen for years, but been given neither permission nor time. On the other hand ...

Yikes! Settting up from scratch in term time to match our current systems is a HUGE job.

 

If you go for CCCC but don't quote me on this as I haven't used this for three years but you wouldn't need to set up assessment manager if you went this route as it is sort of its own reporting system that just links to the timetable, staff and student info in SIM's then you build your reporting around that or that is how it used to be they used to also create some bespoke reports but this was all for electronic to printable copies but looks like it is a lot more graphical now.

[Steven_Cleaver]

You can get some great graphs out of the assessment suite. I will try to get a sample.

@PhilNeal would be interested in a look at these as well if possible, although we sort of have our own system with data automatically exported from Assessment Manager but use Assessment Manager as well so would be interested in a look if possible.

[PhilNeal]

Please see attached a couple of examples of what schools have achieved.

Abbot-Benjamin-004161-Termly Interim Rpt Y9 Sum (G).docx

Abbot-Benjamin-004161-Termly Interim Report Y8 Aut.docx

[CaterinaAnna]

Thanks both once again.

 

Phil, I'll show TPTB the interim reports you sent as part of the campaign to make use of AM7 - but the sticking point is that they don't show attendance or conduct graphically and that's a key requirement.

 

Steven, what I meant was a way of integrating graphics into the report and then printing off a class or year at a time. Sounds like at least Insight is printable, but it would still be on a student-by-student basis. While it would be great to not send reports home to everyone, our catchment area is somewhat different to yours (even allowing for you to have students from Solly'ull as well as SoleyHahl) and a very small proportion of parents use slg, so we'd still be printing a significant number.

 

Current suggestion:

"We could copy and paste the graphs from SIMS in at the end, that's an admin job, shouldn't take too long."

Hmm. 'Print' reports (which makes html file); convert to Word (checking margins, page sizing, borders etc); call up student-teacher page; screen snip, paste, size, align for attendance, then achievement, then behaviour; check that other text boxes haven't jumped around; save; repeat for next student; print reports for real.)

[jenny_urey]

@PhilNeal would be interested in a look at these as well if possible, although we sort of have our own system with data automatically exported from Assessment Manager but use Assessment Manager as well so would be interested in a look if possible.

 

Thank you for mentioning TASC PARS Steve

 

May be also worth having a look at some of the reports we can create using both SIMS ASM and PARS own grades whilst looking at reporting....nice and parent friendly and bespoke to Schools. Saw a post earlier mentioning having to export grades to create a bespoke report. Don't need to using PARS as it will just create the design report based on Schools own calculations, designs and rules.

 

Presentation1.pptx

Edited October 21, 2013 by jenny_urey

[DSapseid]

How do you make AM do the RAG ratings? Currently all our AM Templates do it in black and white. Do i need to change the template to excel from word and use conditional formatting? Or am i barking up the wrong tree!

[PhilNeal]

@CaterinaAnna I didn't make it clear enough that these examples are completely user defined using Word as the template design from which you can drop in data.

[Steven_Cleaver]

Thank you for mentioning TASC PARS Steve

 

May be also worth having a look at some of the reports we can create using both SIMS ASM and PARS own grades whilst looking at reporting....nice and parent friendly and bespoke to Schools. Saw a post earlier mentioning having to export grades to create a bespoke report. Don't need to using PARS as it will just create the design report based on Schools own calculations, designs and rules.

 

Cheers will have more of a look at this in PAR's and SIM's as regards the Graphing as at the moment is just of plain report to be honest wasn't to interested in graphing until now as these were printed so could end up costing the school a bit of money but now they are mostly electronic seems a good idea. One thing Jen are the reports you can create in PAR's unloadable to Insight at the moment staff enter the data for reports into PAR's (Sims Aspects) our reports are created in SIM's with various info on and including Attendance, ATW,ATCH (Attitude to Work and Coursework), Grades, Targets, Subject Average Grade etc this is all uploaded to SIM's document Server so that Parents, Students and Staff can view these on Insight.

[Steven_Cleaver]

@CaterinaAnna I didn't make it clear enough that these examples are completely user defined using Word as the template design from which you can drop in data.

@CaterinaAnna as Phil says they are Word templates so can drop in various data held in SIM's including Attendance and are reasonably easy to link data into.

[CaterinaAnna]

Oh I'd worked out they were Word templates: I'did' advanced reporting (many moons ago), and I'm a reasonably competent mail-merger, so the tables don't phase me, but I've never included graphs. Had a quick play, but I can't work out how to link the chart data source to the report results. Looks like I need to go away and learn how to do that. (I'm sure it's find out-able, it's just not something I've done.)

 

Also when I generate a report from outwith Lesson monitor which includes attendance totals I can (= last time I tried) only get the current value. In theory, of course, that's what we'd want, but if I'm generating reports to cover all of term 1 a couple of days into term 2, or only want attendance over a particular half term, not the year as a whole, then things get more awkward.

 

But all of this is getting into nitty-gritty of Word and SIMS (which may not even be needed) and off the original topic, so I shall head over to SupportNet and Word support places when I've got time to play next week.

 

Thank you all once again.

[DSapseid]

@CaterinaAnna did you manage to get this working? This is starting to crop up again here and want to try and get my head round before being told i need it done by xyz date.

[CaterinaAnna]

'Fraid not: had a good google round and couldn't find any way to include data from a merge source in graphical format on a Word document: one of Phil's did include some, but that was completely SIMS generated and, even if we had our progress data in AM, we wouldn't want the raw current attendance/conduct mark on such a report (would need to be to the end of the previous week, rather than to the moment the report is generated, in case of glitches from missing marks). Every solution I've been offered to getting an historic attendance figure involves pulling data from lesson monitor reports into a spreadsheet which then becomes the merge source - ie what I do already - but that precludes including graphs, so back to square one.

Think it might be do-able if only I could write macros in Word, but I haven't found enough time to learn about those.

[vikpaw]

We used to send home the page you get when you go to display marks, it has the full fishbone structure of the attendance, along with some tables of analysis and a pie chart. Print them off individually and then collate with the rest of the report from AM7. They let you specify the end date for analysis, though usually default to i think 'yesterday'.

 

You could do similar with attendance data if you find a report you like in the attendance reports, so long as you're happy for the data to be on a separate sheet rather than a closely integrated table/block alongside the comments on the main report.

 

I actually had to manipulate the template it used to output the report because it didn't match our days of the week correctly, so in theory there's a lot that can be played with in the display, but the data you get out is limited to what they originally intended for that particular report. So for e.g. if we wanted the reg group to print, and it wasn't on the original, there's no easy way to pull it out of SIMS.

 

In fact, if you want to do some mailmerging, i'd do it separately, then collate together. That's a reasonable admin task. Especially if you can print / merge in the same order as SIMS produces the reports.

[CaterinaAnna]

Printing from display marks means producing it for one student at a time and, even then, it still includes the whole year (ie lots of dates not yet relevant) and goes untidily over pages if someone has had a lot of absences. Unfortunately, I don't have the expertise to amend the template - it asks for an xslt file, about which I know nothing. I did try our support team, but got nowhere.

[vikpaw]

Yeah, xslt was a brain ache, and i had to combine it with a bit of javascript to fix some data issues. End result is pretty neat though.

 

The other lesson monitor reports however can be done in bulk can't they. It's just the collation that is the faffy bit, plus it won't look as pretty. However, if it gets the data out in a decent format to those that need it, that's the first milestone.