Product updates Feb - March 2020

Throughout the current situation, we have continued to release numerous improvements across the MySchool system.

First and foremost, we would like to thank you for your patience and understanding with regards to release dates and information. 

One of the major new releases was the VLE resources, and we have pushed through new tools and enhancements to ensure your schools can continue providing learning support to your students during this difficult period.

If you still need to discuss using VLE for your school, then please raise a ticket to map the pages, and our support team will organise an introductory meeting.

Here is a resume of the enhancements that we have released over the past few months:

Include student passport ID information in reports

We have included a system setting that allows schools to show details from the passport information field in your student profiles. This is included in the attendance reports, and when exporting from the assess grade grid. This is a system setting, so please contact our support team if you wish to activate this feature.

If you use the ID/passport field this will now show when selecting students from the drop down student selector. We have also introduced this feature in other areas around the system. 

Attendance audit report includes Teachers with multiple classes

An improvement was made to the Attendance audit report, to show Teachers who take attendance for multiple classes. A red field will appear over the information popup on the grid, when one of the attendances is incomplete.

Improved information panel for LO graded assignments

When grading LO's in an assignment, we introduced a popup over the LO in the assignment grid to show the weight and proficiency scale set in the assignment.

Class timetable shows holidays and appointments

In the class view, admins and teachers can see the timetables of the students enrolled in the class. Especially useful if all class members follow a similar course enrolment. We improved this to work with the settings in holiday management. Now if scheduled courses are cancelled during the holiday, the class timetable shows this holiday the same way as on My Schedule.

We improved the print feature to include appointments set to the members of the class.

New Assessment report features

We are constantly improving this great new feature of MySchool to enable schools to create their own customised assessment reports. We will continue to enhance this feature to make sure you can produce stylish grade reports, which link into the new assessment functionality available in MySchool.

We also modified the signature section on reports, to allow a signature to be added to the report without using the overview panel in the students review page.

As well as the above options, we have added the ability to change the term session names used in the system, and from those represented on the report front page.

Also we have included the ability to add additional values to a grade type of assessment. This can be used to include non numeric statuses to a specific grade type. Include ABS,EXC as options for Teachers to input grades.

When using a grade field, schools can choose the maximum score to be assigned to grade, this can be shown on the new assessment report to show an 'out of scale'.

IEP information panel available in the Assignment grid view

If you are using the IEP module in MySchool, we have improved the visibility for Teachers and Mentors to see the goals outlined within the module to show on the assignment grade grid.

Super/System administrator seeing multiple menu headers

As a system administrator, you are granted access to functionalities or pages from the roles within your appropriate user group settings. Sometimes, this means you can see Guardian/Student menu headers due this access. This can sometimes mean Administrators can see multiple 'My Schedules' or 'My Files' which are mapped to Staff, Students, and Guardian user groups. We improved the secuirty settings to reduce these duplicate entries appearing on System Admin UI's

We are always available to reorganise your MySchool interface if you wish to rename, move, or delete functionality. Contact the support team to organise a call with the CSM team.

Automated emails in the admissions workflow are now available in rich text

Our great new admissions module is being used by more an more schools, and we continue to make improvements based on your feedback. If you wish to contact individuals or a group of applicants based on their status, there is the possibility to send a mail from the Prospects & Applicants list. Filter the list with the correct status and send formatted reminder mails, or further information mails to help guardians and students onboard as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

Ad hoc lessons improved

A feature which is becoming more and more popular is the use of scheduling lessons outside of a regular rotating schedule. This is a system setting and it needs to be activated via your system settings. Let us know if you wish to discuss using lessons which are outside of your normal rotating weekly timetable.

Now when creating these lessons, the default course room and teacher will be used for these.

A simple average available for assessment calculations

Our new assessment module is an extremely powerful tool which helps schools take control of their assessments, and allows for complete customisation to meet your assessment report needs. Already there was the possibility to Sum grade scores, which allowed for detailed assessments based on specific grade fields, teacher editable ratios allowing for Teachers and educators to apply their own weighted averages between different assessment criteria, and now a simple average based on numeric assessments known as grades.

This allows for subjects to be assessed on specific project settings during the assessment period and calculate an average grade for the students. This calculation is based on 

Assessment 1+Assessment 2+Assessment 3 / Nbr of Assessments

Multi subject creation

Subjects control assessment criteria within MySchool, all courses need to be attached to a subject inorder to manage attendance, attendance and promotion criteria. Previously new subjects needed to be created individually. With the new create multi subject criteria, Admins can introduce new subjects to their curriculum with a simplified UI. This is especially useful for onboarding and creating new assessment criteria within your schools. In subject management, use the arrow next to the create subject button to open the slide over window. This has allowed us now to work on reintroducing adding multiple courses in one of our future releases.

PSR reporting for BC schools

We are able to provide customised official reporting for country specific reporting, PSR is used in our Canadian market place to show a students scholastic records from K-12. It acts as a record that students are obliged to carry with them when changing or leaving schools. Grades should now be attached to course enrolment inorder to show only when the student has completed the course into which they are enrolled.

Class enrolment colour changes

We introduced colour coding on students, when users checked the enrolment tabs of courses, but we have also extended this to class view. If a student is withdrawn from a class or a course, they will appear in red, and a student who is planned to be enrolled in the future will be classed as green. 

Assignment student submissions

The new assignment feature allowing students to submit text or file attachments was imporved. Initially we had designed a strict submission policy, meaning that the student could only submit their finished work once. Following feedback, and for younger students, we have introduced a setting to allow schools to relax this rule, and allow teachers to cancel submissions and enable students to resubmit following guidance. This is a system setting and needs to be activated for your school, it will affect all assignments in your school and is not modifiable for school levels.

Previously, students could only submit for assignments within the active tab, after feedback, we have enabled the ability for them to submit assignments from the ALL tab in their student portal view. The assignment still needs to be open for submissions, and the due date not passed to allow this.

Editing personal details

We have extended the possibility for users to edit their own personal details. These fields are connected to the users system profile. This can be used to encourage staff to maintain contact details up to date, without having to fill out a questionnaire.

Don't forget that you can activate the user directory to allow user details to be searched using the directory feature.

No page limit to key list pages

Due to performance improvements, we can now show all courses, classes, subjects, and user groups in one list page. This has been introduced whilst still maintaining fast load times. You no longer need to change page or set the number of items per page.

Rich text features are available in the review page

If you are using the new assessment module, we realised that the overview panel in the review functionality did not have any rich text features, notably allowing users to enter pre-made comments.

This has now been amended for heads of school or class teachers to add formatted comments to students assessment reports. This only works in conjunction with the new assessment report.

Course and course teacher added to the review page

The review screen is used by peers or Year/school heads to check assessments before publishing, we have now included the course and the appropriate Teacher name in the review screen when selected from the course tabs.

Future releases

As you are aware MySchool and it's teams are stil maintaining 100% coverage and support for your schools instances, and we will keep you updated with news announcements as events happen. We have started by sending a questionnaire asking about your future assessment plans. Please take the time to reply to the form and give us as much insight into your future needs as possible. We are always available to help, but we have to manage our internal resources to continue providing you with enhancements, improvements and brand new features.

If you have any questions about the above changes, then please contact our support team for more information.