New academic year! yippee! (or not)

[DamienTT]

Dear all I've created a new academic year in SIMS and am currently working on the new 2015/16 curriculum on Nova. When I look at the 2015/16 academic year in SIMS it has all of our students as they are now, in 2014/15, such as year groups/reg of course.

1. Can the setting up of aspects and marksheets in assessment manager for the new academic year happen now? It would be really helpful if we could do that in advance of 1st September (my data team are asking).
   
2. Can I import the 2015/16 Nova curriculum into SIMS now, (I assume I set the live date for 1 September) and start playing with academic promotions. Or can I only do that after July??
   
3. I'm using bullet points, as every time I press return twice to create space between paragraphs and sentences this gets lost in the submissions process and it ends up as 1 long paragraph. How do I create spaces between paragraphs? Is there a hidden method other than using the return button?
   

Thank you and thank you again! Damien

[Ecclesbury]

Hi Damien,

 

Can't help you with number 3. I'm afraid...but it might be something to do with your browser not being rich text enabled? I have the same problem using Google Chrome on SupportNet.

 

As for numbers 1 and 2 as long as the academic year is set up you can go ahead and upload the timetable if you want. You can upload the band structure only which means you can start tagging students into classes but no scheduling will be uploaded.

 

For point 1. once you have uploaded the model you can add next years classes markbooks to the template (you just roll the effective dates forward when adding the class from the template window.) HOWEVER classes are only available when they are populated with at least 1 student.

 

That all comes with a big warning though. If you upload the timetable and start tagging students into classes you may run into big problem if you start making changes to your model (even class names) because when you re-import you risk losing all of the tagging that has been done. It's worth considering the risk/reward ratio baring this in mind because you really don't want your data team knocking you door down when your new upload has wiped hours of work they have done!

Edited December 12, 2014 by Ecclesbury

[DamienTT]

Great, thank you Ecclesbury (again!). Yes, it'll be chrome causing chaos, I only use it as it remembers passwords much easier!...... Good news on point 1 - great news rather. There'll be no changes to the model once it's uploaded. (insert evil laugh here).