[sims] Options & Options Offer

[SouthCoastSaint]

We are looking to use Options Offer this year specifically so we can use Insight to allow students to select options.

 

Our timetabler always designs the Options form and decides in advance which pool each subject is going to be offered in - so we have 4 pools, and Art for example will only be offered in A and C.

 

Is this normal practice, or do other schools give a more open choice and let Sims work out the best combinations?

 

If this IS the best way of doing things, I assume Options Offer will cope with this? I would love to hear from anyone using Options Offer with Insight to pre-warn of any pitfalls before we open it to Students.

 

Thanks

[vikpaw]

Haven't used the offer part, but my understanding of the options part is that you give them the choice of picking up to say, 4 options, and they can all exist in every pool, and the system will try it's best to schedule them. Restricting them would be to control how many instances might occur in a week, or to match your resources i.e. rooms / labs / teaching staff.

It's reasonable to stick with what has worked in the past.

[number34]

Options offer is purely for collecting the student choices and is very flexible, you can have fixed blocks or a complete choice. It works well with the Insight Addon.

When the choices have been made they are transferred to Options and the best combinations can be worked out there.

We have been very pleased with the way the process works.

[SouthCoastSaint]

Thanks both for info.

 

Is there an Insight report to show you which students have not made their choices? Also, we do ask for parental signature on our forms - and I see in Options Offer you can specify this. How does that work in Insight? I assume the choices are made on the children's page and not the parents?

[number34]

Insight just allows the input of the data so no reports. You can set it for the parent to approve in both and choices are visible in parent and child pages as far as I can tell.

You get details of who has entered the data from SIMS. I seem to remember having to fiddle a lot but it is possible.