[sims] Creating marksheets for all assessed pieces of work

[Flaming8]

Hi all

 

Long time user of the site but this is my first post and so would be really grateful for any input.

 

I am in the process of migrating data from the school’s old MIS to SIMS and am currently working on creating marksheets for each subject, which for termly tracking purposes I'm ok with. I've used Capita's templates as a guideline and this seems to work well.

 

My current issue is that the school would like to record each piece/unit of assessed work for each term. Initially I thought this would bequite straightforward but on further investigation it appears not so. The previous system allowed teachers to enter assessed work on an ad hoc basis and the number of assessments varied for each subject. In SIMS you obviously need to know this information beforehand so that marksheets can be created in advance.

 

If you knew the number of assessed units for each subject/term how would you then go about setting this up with regard to creating the aspects/result sets? The only way I can think of at present is to create a separate result set for each piece of termly assessed work i.e. Autumn Unit1, Autumn Unit2 etc which could then be attached to an aspect i.e Maths Attainment Level. However, by approaching it this way I would still need to know what each unit was entitled beforehand so that the column headings within the marksheets reflected this, else I would only be able to allocate generic titles i.e Unit 1, Unit 2 etc. It also seems rather long-winded!

 

It would be great to hear how others create marksheets for entering assessed pieces of work.

 

Thanks in advance.

Edited August 18, 2015 by Flaming8

[bobsmith]

create unique aspects and keep your result sets simple.

 

So Aspect = maths unit 1, resultset = autumn

 

rather than aspect = maths, resultset = autumn unit 1

[Flaming8]

Thanks bobsmith, that makes more sense. I read somewhere that it was better to use less aspects and more result sets but in the instance it would've a tad unnecessary creating 5 results sets per term and then for each year group!

 

Sorry if this sounds like a daft question but it's my first time working in a school. Do teachers/HoD's notify you the number of assessed pieces of work per term and what each piece of work is entitled? I can setup a marksheet for each term that contains 5 aspects but teachers are unable to tell what piece of work the aspect relates to.

[bobsmith]

Yes, you need to get their requirements from them, Teachers brains often work in mysterious ways - looking it up yourself on the exam board website *might* look like the sensible and proactive thing to do, but they rarely do things that make sense.

 

Normally more resultsets are the answer, but in your particular case it struck me that you needed more aspects.

 

The simple logic behind it is, aspects store "things" and resultsets are used to store that "thing" if it is recorded more than once at different times of the year.

[Marci]

We have data extraction points throughout the year that we refer to as DX1 through DX5. These are created as resultsets in SIMS.

 

We then have the subject aspects. I use one template then clone it for all subjects. This is done by finding the department with the requirement for the most number of units. If BTEC this could be up to 12 units. If AS or A2 then generally 3 units dependant on subject specification. It's up to each department's head to determine / remember what they're referring to as their 1st Unit, 2nd Unit, 3rd Unit etc. SIMS is kept as universally generic as possible to minimise repetitive maintenance / constant changes on subject specific basis, so once you know the most units for each qualification level you're good to go. This also makes setting up Individual Report templates much quicker and easier too... you just tell it to skip empty rows.

 

If they're particularly hopeless at remembering this, you can just change the column headers on the marksheet template to match their particular requirements, but keep your aspects themselves to a generic naming convention.

 

So for us, each subject then ends up with GCE AS 1st Unit to 3rd Unit, GCE A2 1st Unit to 3rd Unit & BTEC 1st Unit to BTEC 12th Unit aspects, & whatever overall aspects are needed (overall points / grade / ALPS grade / L3VA / target / whatever).

 

For analysis we pop out all the aspects for each extraction point and throw them into SISRA as a tracking point so staff can refer to them online from any device / compare against previous tracking points / targets / results.

Edited August 28, 2015 by Marci

[Flaming8]

Cheers for the response Marci! This has given me reassurance that I've setup things up in an acceptable/workable way.

 

I have a feeling the teachers will want the aspects tailored in some way and am thinking of adding each unit title in to the comments box of the template, at least they are then have a quick point of reference. I considered amending each aspect column heading but wasn't sure if each class/set undertook the same unit of work and at the same time. If not, I'd have to create separate marksheets for each set of a subject. Either way, I'm learning that a fair bit of prep work needs to be undertaken before unleashing them on the teachers in Sept.

 

I heard indirectly that SISRA has been purchased here too. I've yet to use it myself but most reviews seem to cast it in a positive light.

 

Thanks again for taking the time to reply, much appreciated.