[sims] Best practice in making Templates and Marksheets?

[iceman]

This follows on from a previous thread (import historical grade data, can it be done?) but started a new one as its a new topic.

 

In relation to the assessment structure that I have outlined below, can someone please clarify simply the relationship between templates and marksheets and best practice in making them with minimal effort and maximum flexibility?

 

I remember a data manager complaining to me in the past about the hundreds of templates - or was it marksheets? that they had to recreate each year and it seemed to me that they must be misunderstanding the process and there must be a better way. I want to do it that better way!

 

The new assessment structure the deputy wants is as follows;

• Years 7-11 will all have 6 assessment points (AP_1 to AP_6) in each academic year, in every subject
  
• At each Assessment Point, every student will be scored as integer 1-9 in up to 6 Assessment Objectives (AO_01 to AO_6). The actual criteria for scoring differs between subjects but the name/description of each AO is the same between all subjects and years
  
• There will be a single baseline score for every student on entry. I am calling this Assessment point zero (AP_0). It won't change but might be allocated in any year, depending upon when they join the school.
  
• 
  

 

Following advice given to me in my other thread, I have:

• made 7 Aspects, one for each of the Assessment Objectives AO_0 to AO-6. I have allowed scores of 0-9 (where 0 will represent nothing has been entered by the staff)
  
• made 35 result sets, one for each yeargroup/assessment point; Year_07_AP_00, Year_07_AP_01, Year_07_AP_02 ... Year_11_AP_06
  
• 
  

 

Now I want to make the templates and then the marksheets. As the assessment structure is the same for evey year group it would appear I only need one template for the whole school but the creation process asks me for Group and Course Link, implying I need a different one for every subject and / or year group. And then do I need a separate marksheet for every class - and have to re-create these marksheets every year when the class codes change? Is that what took so long for the data manager? Confused! Any advice on good template & marksheet creation very welcome.

 

Incidentally also following advice I have assigned categories to the aspects but although I tried to assign all subjects to one aspect by ticking the box next to 'Subject' it didn't seem to do it. Surely I don't have to manually tick each subject category?

[Banjo]

I think you need to go on AM training before diving in at the deep end. How do you plan to distinguish between each subject with just 7 aspects and results sets that are year group/time based?

 

Following advice given to me in my other thread, I have:

 

made 7 Aspects, one for each of the Assessment Objectives AO_0 to AO-6. I have allowed scores of 0-9 (where 0 will represent nothing has been entered by the staff)

made 35 result sets, one for each yeargroup/assessment point; Year_07_AP_00, Year_07_AP_01, Year_07_AP_02 ... Year_11_AP_06

[bobsmith]

first issue - SIMS doesn't record results against subjects - it records results against aspects.

 

so as Banjo said above, you need those 7 assessments created for each subject. Assuming something like 20 subjects (you may have more or less) that's 7 x 20 = 140 aspects.

 

You can clone them though, it'll be ever so slightly faster.

 

You've got your result sets ok, though an easier to read naming convention might have been Y07_AP01 but that's largely a matter of taste.

 

If you record your AP_0 without a result set it won't matter when it's given to a student.

 

Oh, and yes - you need a new template for each year/subject combination - though you can clone (this actually does save time!)

 

Hope that helps.

[CAM]

I use four assessment points throughout the year using result sets and have one grade aspect for each KS3 subject. Autumn/Summer notation is leftover from a predecessor and probably going to change to a straight 1-2-3-4 in the KS3 reforms once I have all historical data uploaded to our tracking system. For Year 8 the result set changes to Y8-P1 etc, and for Year 9 Y9-P1 etc.

 

English Marksheet:

KS3 English Grade - Y7-P1

KS3 English Grade - Y7-AUT

KS3 English Grade - Y7-P3

KS3 English Grade - Y7-SMR

 

Maths Marksheet:

KS3 Maths Grade - Y7-P1

KS3 Maths Grade - Y7-AUT

KS3 Maths Grade - Y7-P3

KS3 Maths Grade - Y7-SMR

 

Staff look back over their previous grades when entering data so they can see a student's progress. I simply lock the old columns and unlock the new ones as the year progresses. The cloning tool in AM7 will quickly let me create new subjects from the old template and the Replace tool lets me re-use another year group's marksheet in a new year group.

 

For those wondering about KS4 they get a KS4 aspect as the data entered isn't the same as KS3. But this is all going to be ripped apart and rebuilt in the reforms anyway.

[Banjo]

You need to cover three things with your model. Subject, Year and Time (Aut, Spr, Sum etc), You will either end up with lots of Aspects (A) and few result sets (B), or just a few Aspects (A) and lots of result sets (B), with © being the number of results you need to collect for a student. AxB=C

 

What I wouldn't do and would strongly recommend against, is trying to take a short cut and use the 'result date' as a proxy for 'Time' – I’ve known schools do this and reporting the results turns into a nightmare!

[iceman]

Thanks to all who replied.

 

@Banjo I did go on quite a bit of AM training years ago when I was a data manager - even gave some training at LEA events.

But since then have been working mainly with SQL databases.

Now I need to work with AM again to interface SIMS with an SQL database and I've forgotten what a nightmare SIMS is to deal with.

In SQL you would simply have one field that stores the actual score, indexed via other fields for the Yeargroup, Subject and AssessmentPoint.

Yes you'd have multiple records totalling Num Yeargroups x Num Subjects x Num AssessmentPoints but only one name for the actual data. That would give me about 600 records inserted each year

 

SIMS seems to require a separately named storage unit for everything!

 

Anyway, combining the helpful replies from everyone am I correct in saying that for about

• 5 yeargroups
  
• 20 subjects
  
• 9 classes in each subject in each yeargroup
  
• 6 assessment points per year
  

I will need..

• Aspects - around 120, one for each Subject/Assessment Objective combination - (but these won't need changing unless we get new subjects or assessment objectives)
  
• Result sets - 35, one per Yeargroup/Assessment point combination - (won't need changing unless we get new yeargroups or assessment points)
  
• Templates - around 100, one for every year/subject combination - (won't need changing unless we get new yeargroups or subjects)
  
• Marksheets - around 900, one for every classcode, with groups of 9 allocated to one template - (will need re-making every academic year as class codes inevitably change)
  

OR is the last one

• Marksheets - around 100, one for every subject/year combination. Subject overview with all student can be seen by the HOD but individual teachers will be able to see a marksheet with just their class in it, even if more than one staff member teaches that class.
  

 

@bobsmith my naming convention is actually Y_07_AP_01 (I put 'Year' in the post to make it easier for others to understand). When designing the naming convention I was more concerned with how easy and foolproof it will be for the external software I've developed to automatically parse the names and extract parts from them to build IDs for use in my SQL database. (had a nightmare with legacy stuff from someone else that used just single digits like Y7, Y8, Y9. OK until you get to Y10 and Y11 and then not only do you have different length names from which its more tricky to to extract the integer part of the year but the sort order goes up the spout!)

Edited June 23, 2015 by iceman
Changed my definition of Aspect from Subject/Assessment Point to Subject/ Assessment Objective

[vikpaw]

There is a really good thread with AM advice, it is dated, but i'll dig it out. Many features have been added to the module since to save time. I think you have a good grasp on the structure from your last post so you should be okay.

 

Some comments though:

You will need individual marksheets per class, in the template you add them against each class and this also controls permissions. In addition you would make one for the whole year too and link it to the course so the HoD can see all together.

You will also inevitably end up with more templates to summarise data over a year, but if you're exporting elsewhere for analysis, perhaps not. It's nice to have a yeargroup one for the HoY with all subjects in. In my case this had to be 3, split into core, options and other because of the quantity of subjects. I believe the HoY will automatically see the sub marksheets, and possibly the same for HoD - can't remember exactly.

Bearing in mind the above comment on number of subjects, the various options at Y10 / Y11 may up your estimates quite a bit, but it's not much more work.

 

One key thing i'd consider - not sure of what others feel about this, is i would create your aspects as Grade type, not integer values. I think from your post you might have made it a numeric cell. The benefit of it being a grade is you can do grade comparisons, and assign points scores to each level, so you could also do a grade lookup based on an average score. You could achieve similar by doing simple maths with integer columns, but i prefer this method. It also provides scope for extending the grading range in the future or altering it, replacing with descriptions instead of values, whilst still maintaining the underlying score.

 

EDIT1: Amended above for clarity

EDIT2: Found this post which has a couple of useful links http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/60161-aspects-assessment-manager.html#post545370

Edited June 23, 2015 by vikpaw

[bobsmith]

vikpaw adds useful comments as ever

 

Even if your grading system is using numbers (1-9) I'd still do as he says and make them grade type - it allows you to change the numbers behind the scenes should it help with any calculations that come along (ks2 to ks4 progress perhaps?)

 

Only thing of note in your (iceman's) response - "Aspects - around 140, one for each Subject/AssessmentPoint combination"

 

Did you mean Assessment Objective? - assessment points would be covered by your resultsets.

[iceman]

@bobsmith

Thanks for reading my post so carefully. I had to re-read it several times before I saw that you are probably right

I got the 7 x 20 from your post. I have 7 assessment points & 20 subjects so I assumed you were suggesting I use subject/Assessment Point combination.

It does seem more logical though to use Subject/Assessment Objective combination, ie 6 things being measured (AO) for every subject each time there is an assessment point (AP) so its about 6x20 = 120 (not 140)

I'll edit my earlier post if I can.

 

I can see the benefit of using grades instead of integers. I'll change that as I haven't made many aspects yet.

 

@vicPaw

I did see these links. They are probably the ones you were referring to. If not then they are useful anyway, as is the one in your last post.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/43559-good-am7-data-structure.html

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/43373-assessment-manager-7-assigning-marksheets-teachers.html

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/35596-historical-data-sims-net.html

[vikpaw]

With gradesets you can even set up sub levels and a differences gradeset with negatives too if required.

[Banjo]

Assessment Manager is quite powerful once you get up to speeds with it. You'll soon be adding a missing result columns to your templates and progress calculations for the teachers.

[bobsmith]

@Banjo

 

missing results columns? sounds interesting and I haven't heard of it before - can you elaborate?

[Banjo]

If for example collecting 10 results in a Marksheet per student, you can set the last column up (#11) to be a calculated field that checks for blanks in the first 10 and changes colour to RED or displays the word Incomplete etc,

[bobsmith]

which you could then track in an aspect or group analysis grid presumably to give you a total of missing marks across a subject perhaps?