Alternative Reporting Tools

[CAM]

Does anyone have any ideas for alternative reporting tools I can present to management?

 

Currently we have a homebrew system in place and it is a far from ideal solution for the following reasons:

 

1) Data is exported from SIMS so it is immediately out of date and not live.

2) Data has to be altered to a CSV file with specific column names and merged with more SIMS data before upload.

3) After uploading, data held in the system such as teacher names has to be updated to correctly assign reports to staff.

4) All these processes take a very long time due to intensive checking of the data and mistakes still fall through the cracks!

5) The program has some major flaws making it difficult to use that I can't go into on here.

 

I've already given the most ideal suggestion of Options and Learning Gateway to my manager, but the current system is free and hand-coded by our IT Director (who holds the SIMS budget instead of my boss). Showing a 4 figure price tag in a proposal will need a fair bit of work to achieve.

 

What options have I got and how do I recommend alternatives before we are stuck with this for the 2010 reporting requirements? We were looking at doing reports in Assessment Manager (initially as a backup system due to reliability issues with the homebrew last half-term) but then teaching staff cannot do their reports at home.

 

And guidance for putting proposals forward would help too please.

[Oops_my_bad]

What about SIMS profiles? Should already be included with your SIMS licence I'd have thought?

[Sylv3r]

We use SIMS profiles with the profiles webpart (at an additional cost).

 

Gives the staff access to write the reports from home as well as pull in various other information from SIMS for the reports - Attendance and Assessment data.

[CAM]

Yeah got Options and Profiles mixed up.

 

I thought you had to pay extra for the Profiles module?

 

Oh and Sylv3r, is that webpart to do with SLG?

[Sylv3r]

Yeah got Options and Profiles mixed up.

 

I thought you had to pay extra for the Profiles module?

 

Oh and Sylv3r, is that webpart to do with SLG?

 

Yes its an additional cost to the the SIMS webparts with SLG.

[danIT]

Have you looked at i2Report?

 

The school i used to work at purchased it about 4 years ago and is still using it.

[Sivadam]

You don't need an alternative system if you have AM7, Profiles7 and SLG

Why would you want to look elsewhere?

[danIT]

Just throwing it out there, maybe I dont want SLG?

[Sivadam]

Then I would humbly suggest that you seriously consider that option!

The Profiles7 Senior Manager Checking procedures should now be able from the Autumn Release as well!

[CAM]

So, to use Profiles it is already part of SIMS? I assume that since it is on our Focus menu but no-one has ever touched it. But, to get the staff to fill their reports in from home, we need to purchase SLG and a web-part (which, if I recall correctly, are the panels that appear in the Sharepoint site?). Then just add the web part for parental access and voila, 2010 reporting requirement nailed as well?

 

For the record, we definately don't have SLG as the budget was insufficient when we last looked. Does anyone also know where I can see some sample Profiles reports? We need to put them together into an ALPS report sheet and require specific headings such as Performance, Attitude and Behaviour.

Edited November 5, 2009 by CAM

[Sivadam]

With Profiles7 it is difficult to give you an example without giving you a copy of an actual report. The Template shows virtually nothing. It is only in the pupil generated report that you will see how it is set up. You can have whatever sections you decide to have but these are controlled in the Comment Banks.

I would suggest visiting a school in your area that is using Profiles7 to get a real flavour of what Profiles7 is capable of.

If you raise it on SupportNet then I am sure you will get a couple of invites. If such a school also has SLG then so much the better.

Edited November 6, 2009 by Sivadam

[PhilNeal]

Two observations - the SIMS Profile layout is determined by what you can design in Word. Most LAs have bought a licence that includes Profiles but its possible to have a licence for SIMS that does not include Profiles.

[vikpaw]

We use Assessment manager for reports, and that should be included in the licence.

 

It's very efficient once set up, and with careful planning that's not too bad (there's another thread about this).

 

The benefits of using SIMS are enormous if you weigh up the total cost of the solution compared to the export import fiasco you have going on. Sell it as a backup and once they've seen it, they'll want to use it all the time.

 

It is not easily possible for staff to write reports at home, but there are workarounds. For one, you can export all the marksheets in bulk, the staff can enter comments and grades into these and then you can import them.

 

Problems: the marksheets aren't a very good interface (Excel - XML), are difficult to edit, the data needs validating else it wont import.

Benefits: quick, easy and they can formulate the data in Word or their own Excel files and paste into the marksheets after.

 

The second option is for you to supply the staff with class lists, or they can provide their own. Write their reports how they want at home in word, excel, filemaker, or otherwise, and then come into school and copy paste the data live into SIMS. It really doesn't take long, once they get used to it.

 

I've used both methods for years, and it's really great.

 

Once you get the above working, and 'the' director and other management like the solution, you can sell them on SLG and then they can have remote access to the marksheets from home. As that's extra cost, and work to set it up, i'd say prove it working with the other method first.

 

Assessment / reporting really is something that shouldn't be done outside of the main MIS.

 

Profiles is good, and has some advantages, but I ( and a small band of renegades still prefer AM7).

Edited November 10, 2009 by vikpaw
typo! :P

[CAM]

Ack! No way to include drop boxes in AM7 sheet exports? That's what is stopping us so far with AM7 as staff select from a strict criteria like Good, Above Expectations, etc.

[vikpaw]

Not that i know of CAM. We've used similar things in the past e.g. ME,WTE,EE (meeting expectations, working towards expectations, exceeding expectations) using a grade set, so it's strict.

 

If you export the marksheets out, they have to use the correct code, as those and only those will be reimported.

 

You could possibly add validation to the cells on the marksheet, but to do that you need to make the XML file an XLS type and then remove protection, Add in the validation, and hope you can rename the file and import it afterwards.

 

It's definitely worth a try. I've frequently imported data from a spreadsheet by manually mapping columns to aspects, and i just Save As the file into XML format. The only thing you need to make sure is still in the file is the hidden rows at the top, that store the aspect mapping.

 

Worst case you'd have to do as i do, and manually map the columns on data entry. If you are going to do that, make sure you export with admission number to allow SIMS to match the rows to students in the db. This is obviously a long process if you have lots of aspects.

 

Surely you can beat the staff into being strict with their data entry. If you enter the correct data once, won't Excel autofill all future entry if you type the first letter. I think it still does that with XML files.

 

At my old school, i just used to visually check each marksheet and do a find and replace if need be. It's still quicker than manual import if there are marksheets for every year, every subject.

[MattMitchell]

The best way to enter grades and validate them is either to enter them using the SIMS client, or to enter them using SLG. The same thing applies to Profiles for comments.

 

All our grades and comments are entered using AM7 (I'm looking at using Profiles but we're trying to keep to a report-briefly-and-frequently model), and although the actual report generation takes place outside of SIMS, I rely heavily on the data validation mechanisms in SIMS to ensure that people enter meaningful stuff!

 

There are a couple of staff who go the exported marksheet route, but we try to discourage it, as it tends to make life more awkward, and moves the burden of entering a valid grade away from the person entering the grades (teacher) to someone else (admin staff).

 

There are ways to get data out of SIMS cleanly and efficiently; what I would say, though, is that it's hard to think of a situation where you wouldn't want staff to enter data directly into SIMS. If your reporting solution works, fair enough, stick with it: but it doesn't sound like it's perfect, and the whole issue of online reporting is disturbing. If the CSV exported needs manual editing before it can be used, this doesn't suggest that the online access will be all that rigidly secure! SLG looks good.

[vikpaw]

CAM, I completely concur with Matt ^. The best way to get data into SIMS is to encourage staff to do it straight into SIMS even if they produce it at home and copy paste it in at school as i suggested before. This is what we do here now, until i can get SLG set up.

 

My suggestions regarding exporting marksheets were just to answer your questions, but all those routes come with associated problems, mostly manual intervention by you (us as techs).

 

Sometimes we (IT techs) are at risk of over engineering the solution, maybe we just like a challenge or have very exacting standards, but often, the true solution is to say to staff, this is what you should be entering into the column, just these 3 grades, if you do it wrong, you correct it until it's right. You just have to be harsh, they are teachers after all and should understand that attitude.

 

[stands back and awaits abuse]

[CAM]

Thanks for all the replies, has given me some good ideas.

 

Looks like SLG and Profiles is definately the way to go.

[Damian]

We used Profiles for reporting last year. Generally staff were happy enough with it given that no-one likes change, and our previous (pull data out of SIMS, stick it in Access, generate Word documents, write reports, upload to access then generate report) system was excellent from a user's point of view (though not from a back-room point of view).

 

What staff didn't like about profiles was the lack of remote access (you can't stick it on a USB stick and take it home) and the fact that assessment info for the same report had to be recorded in an AM7 marksheet. This is better now that "tabbed browsing" has been introduced.

 

Our biggest sticking point was remote access. Several staff were very unhappy with having to cut and paste from a word document into profiles (disadvantage of moving away from a well established system that staff found easy), some claiming it took a very long time (I just don't get this - though some were struggling on with touch pads rather than using a proper mouse).

 

So we got involved with a pilot of SLG and tried using that. Because of hosting issues this was very problematic with some staff finding that they could not access SLG fully in the evening before a deadline, but there were also some odd glitches like the profiles edited on SLG coming into SIMS with the wrong font - this was not easy to sort out.

 

Our impressions from the pilot were that SLG did not give a very attractive or intuitive interface - good enough for staff to use, but not what we would hope for from a good online reporting solution. It may be that SLG can be moulded into a much more appealing system, but we just didn't get that far in this pilot.

 

We'll probably stick with profiles for this year, but we might be back to cut & paste. We're also looking at PARS + Connect + Insight, but we have a lot of stuff set up in SIMS - particularly AM7 that I don't want to have to set up afresh in PARS.

Edited November 30, 2009 by Damian

[kxv2020]

Ack! No way to include drop boxes in AM7 sheet exports? That's what is stopping us so far with AM7 as staff select from a strict criteria like Good, Above Expectations, etc.

 

You can do this in Sims but its not a drop down box. You have to right click on the cell "Select Grade for cell" and you can see a list of options that you can enter in the cell - e.g. A - G etc. 1 - 4.

This saves staff members from mouse clicks which are a pain when doing 30 kids. You also fill this and apply it to the whole column. A far better system than CMIS/eportal!

[vikpaw]

You can do this in Sims but its not a drop down box. You have to right click on the cell "Select Grade for cell" and you can see a list of options that you can enter in the cell - e.g. A - G etc. 1 - 4.

This saves staff members from mouse clicks which are a pain when doing 30 kids. You also fill this and apply it to the whole column. A far better system than CMIS/eportal!

 

@Kiran - Yes, but that functionality wont go through to the xml spreadsheets on export which is what CAM is looking for in this instance.

[ChrisH]

We also use AM7 for our reporting. This was to make the reports portable so we send out exported marksheets then once the data is in we produce reports which the staff edit. The ideal scenario would be all our Teachers remoting in and editing the comments on profiles but at the moment we have this.

It's not ideal as the reports are individual and I have written loads of VBA and VB script for collation and other purposes.

[Top_Cat]

We use Profiles 7 for end-of-term reports. Our comment banks offer only blank comments for teachers to write as they wish. However, as they select the blank comment, the pupil's appropriate assessments are automatically pasted in from AM7. This avoids the need to flick to the Student Teacher View to check recent entries.

 

As we use Citrix (a terminal server system) we're fortunate in having remote access to the network through a portal from our web-site. This means teachers can log in from home and work exactly as they would at school, provided that (a) their broadband connection is good and (b) their home PC is not too geriatric!

 

Even so, a large number of teachers still write their comments in Word then copy and paste them into Profiles. The major problem with this is that they often forget to select the comment with the tick box and the assessments therefore do not pull through from AM7.

 

The final report document is designed separately in the Session Manager and the end-result looks neat and professional. I know there are a lot of users like Vik out there who doggedly stick with AM7 and good luck to them - if the clock ain't broken, don't fix it I say. But, if you're starting out from the point-of-view that AM7 is good for recording and managing assessments but you want something slicker for reporting, Profiles is the beast to harness!