[sims] Selecting from a bank of comments

[SouthCoastSaint]

I hope someone will be able to give me inspiration for a better way to enable something in Sims...

 

We want to use a bank of (probably) numbers to correspond with a bank of statements for use in reports generated in Individual Reports. Basically, we have previously used Profiles, but are looking to include a target for each subject on our data reports. I had thought I would use a grade set for each subject & year, with staff entering the number they want, and the comments being in the result description. This would be fine for the reports I think, but the problem with this is that the staff need to be able to see these comments and not just a number.

 

I really don't want this to be a free text comment field as we don't want to have a problem with keying errors, but I am unsure if Sims will let me do what I want.

 

Anyone have any better ideas?

 

Thanks

[vikpaw]

If the comment is short you can write them in the template notes / description to be available at the top of the marksheet . I think that works and then essentially how you described would do the trick.

[SouthCoastSaint]

Vik, do you mean that staff would use the list in the notes to cut and paste from? I wanted to avoid them having to do that.

 

It seems such an easy request to have a different kind of aspect, like a comment one, but where you can pick from a drop down list!

 

The only way I can think of getting around it for now, is to have a numerical aspect say 1-20, that teachers use for picking their comment (probably form a printed list next to them), then later I filter by this number and cut and paste into a second (comment) column the related target for each number. This will create a lot of work for me, with 1700 students, but at least the end result will be what the teachers need.

[PhilNeal]

You can generate complete reports from values in aspects.

[SouthCoastSaint]

I can get what I need printed on my Individual data report by using result description tags. The problem is the area for improvement (target etc) is to become part of the tracking marksheet so teachers can use it as a strategy for learning, while at the same time looking at other data for a class, therefore I need the strategy to display and not a number relating to it. We wanted to move away from profiles for this which feel a bit more separate to data when you have to open a linked doc for each student.

 

I think eventually I would like to see this going a step further and perhaps classes would be shuffled for re-teaching key topics using these areas for improvement. Not sure I have explained myself very well. It looks like initially teachers will have to cut and paste into a comment aspect from a list of pre-determined statements - unless someone shows me a better way!

[LosOjos]

I can get what I need printed on my Individual data report by using result description tags. The problem is the area for improvement (target etc) is to become part of the tracking marksheet so teachers can use it as a strategy for learning, while at the same time looking at other data for a class, therefore I need the strategy to display and not a number relating to it. We wanted to move away from profiles for this which feel a bit more separate to data when you have to open a linked doc for each student.

 

I think eventually I would like to see this going a step further and perhaps classes would be shuffled for re-teaching key topics using these areas for improvement. Not sure I have explained myself very well. It looks like initially teachers will have to cut and paste into a comment aspect from a list of pre-determined statements - unless someone shows me a better way!

 

Hi @SouthCoastSaint - we've just started doing exactly what you describe this year. We have set up gradesets (and corresponding aspects) for each subject in each year group, our grades are lettered (to avoid confusion with other numbered gradesets we use) and we use the descriptions on Ind Reps.

 

To help the teachers complete their reports, I email them a list of the available grades and their corresponding comments. I can understand the appeal of displaying the comments on the marksheet, but one thing to bear in mind is that would make for a very, very wide marksheet and if you're staff are anything like ours, they'd complain about it being awkward to use.

 

We're also using them to aide tracking. At the moment, we use progress grids that generate cohorts for each grade type. This helps teachers/HODs to quickly find what kind of help is being provided to different cohorts of students.

 

I'm working on (but have not completed) an Excel template which I will drop my marksheet data in to and which will then perform a VLOOKUP against the comment grades to display their corresponding comments on the spreadsheet, as our HODs feel that would provide a good overview for them.

 

So, although SIMS itself won't do everything you want, there are ways and means of achieving what you want to if you're willing to do a little data manipulation in Excel.

[SouthCoastSaint]

Thanks LosOjos. I made a mock up marksheet last night for the DHd and I am meeting him today. He think will be quite keen for the comments to display, they will actually be replacing internal Strategy free comments that are currently not shared with parents. I don't want free text for reports as we are back to the spell checking problem.

 

I am going to search for a change request for a grade set that allows pre-defined comments. I bet there is one, if not i am going to create it!

[vikpaw]

Good luck with that @SouthCoastSaint!

 

The workaround is as per @LosOjos described and i think similar to how you were hoping to make it work. Use a gradeset / aspect where the result description includes your comment. Now the limitation here is that it's only 100 chars. If you can live with that, it will be usable in the ind.rep.

 

What we've done in the past, is use the notes field in the template to show the key for your comment grade aspect. i.e. 1 = try harder, 2 = tries quite hard most days, 3 = works ok, 4 = whatever - you get the idea. I added 15 rows with 80 chars each as a test, so there should be plenty of scope to include the info you need bearing in mind you can only have 100 chars per result.

 

I like the idea of using letters, or in fact multiple letters or short phrases as a grade can have 15 chars, so to make it easier for staff maybe you could group them by type so there is a prefix on groups of comments, or you could abbreviate the general meaning of the comment or turn it into an acronym, depending on the range and types of strategies you want to list.

 

Does that make more sense?

Edited May 19, 2015 by vikpaw

[SouthCoastSaint]

That's useful to know. I had a brief conversation with Dht this morning and it did seem that he might be happy with using just the grade in the marksheet, but trying to make it more meaningful. Now I can go armed with the information that the grade can be 15 characters. That should give us a little scope. I am hoping I won't need to put the descriptions in the template notes, as they will see list of them if they right click on a cell.

[vikpaw]

Before you go into a meeting with a gun i loaded, just double check and make a test gradeset, so you can say you oiled the barrel

[SouthCoastSaint]

Yep, 15 characters. I never doubted you to be honest!

[vikpaw]

I only say that cos we don't use SIMS for assessment any more so my testing is not live, plus i'm quite a few versions behind too, and things might have changed.