The next thing that needs to be done is setting up the academic courses and sections. Grades should not be maintained in grade level ADA course sections but� only in Academic classes. ADA course sections are for maintaining all-day attendance and enrollment records and are not tied to specific academic subjects and should not be used for grades.
High schools and larger middle schools will have already completed this process before the opening of the school year to establish class rosters. Elementary schools wanting to use the gradebook must establish academic courses and sections as well.
Course Setup & Management
The course form can be launched from the Form Launch toolbar under Courses…
SchoolWise comes pre-loaded with default courses that should relate to your school type, these are a good start but you may need to edit or add courses, and you will need to set up the sections within each course.
Course – a course can be thought of as a subject and is defined as any Grade Level, Academic Class, Activity or List that a student can be enrolled into. Students are not directly enrolled in courses but sections of courses. A course is a subject like Algebra 1 or PE 7. These courses have been taught year after year for the last one hundred years or so. A section of a course is a specific instance of a course taught by one teacher to a group of students during a particular school year in a particular classroom. The difference between a course and a section must be understood. To create a new Course – first select what type from the pull down menu - Launch the courses form then click the new icon enter the local id (Should be unique), long & short name of the course, set the required fields then click the Save icon. You can set the other fields as needed.
Academic Courses - Courses are the Math, English, History, and Social Studies etc. that you would normally associate with a class. Classes do require a CBEDS code & can be setup with their own marking system and attendance requirements. Make sure to set Grad Requirements for Academic classes if you are planning to do Student Transcripts.
Credits – make sure you select the correct credit value for the class you enter, credits attempted and earned is calculated by the course length.
Grade Level (ADA) or 0H – grade levels are used for ADA calculation and every student must first be enrolled into a grade level before being enrolled into any classes or programs. SchoolWise often refers to the Grade Level class as the 0H class.
Activities and Lists – Activities and Lists are used for any other purpose where enrollment rosters are required. Ie. Field trips, bus roster etc.
Section – Before any student can be enrolled into a course of any kind a section has to be created for that course. Click on the course that you wish to create a section for – from the list on the left. And to the bottom right of the form you will see the Section area (highlighted in red above) this is where you create the Section for the year. Sections should have a Unique LocalID to prevent issues with overalps.
Next, go to the bottom part of the page and click on the new icon to add a new section to the course.
This pops up the section form where you can enter the teachers name, room number, period, id & student limit. The student limit is just for reference.
Click OK when your done entering the info and you section is now ready to enroll students into.
Courses Vs. Sections
There is a lot of confusion as to the difference between courses and sections and both end up being called classes which further muddies the waters. An example helps to clarify the topic. In high school there is a course called U.S. History that all juniors need to take. There could be three different teachers teaching it during different periods during the day. A Section is one teacher teaching a group of students during one period of the day during one school year. In a large high school there could be ten sections of the course called U.S. History.
A gradebook will be created for every academic course with a corresponding section. Even though elementary school students may stay in the same room all day with the same teacher, these courses and sections need to be established so that the teachers will have one gradebook for every subject.