Product update January

North America/Canada @ 10h00 (PST) on 14th Jan 2020

Join the meeting here

Happy new year and all the best from MySchool, and what a great start to 2020 with updates on the new product releases expected in January 2020. Please join one of the above webinars to hear more. As an appetiser, then have a look at the list of features that we have released following the Holiday break.

Attendance Audit

In MySchool, default attendance is based on a timetable with a repeating schedule and periods, however, there is also the possibility to schedule ad hoc lessons outside of this rotation. We have now made the audit report count these lessons as well.

Subject specifications (assessment criteria)

Many schools are using our new assessment module, with learning outcomes, customisable assessment criteria and student self reflections. Student self reflections are connected to the student portal and they have the possibility to give feedback on a subject grade level. We have now entered a description text box where Teachers can enter instructions to guide the student. 

In order to have a standalone student self reflection not connected to an academic subject/course, you need to create a subject and course per grade level. Use Text submission in subject specifications as the assessment type.

We also noted that rich text fields were being counted as mandatory if they were selected for an assessment type. These now can be customised like other assessment criteria, by ticking the Contribution is required field.

If you would like to use our student self reflection, then contact the support team to map the pages. 

Schedule and Timetable

Appointments can be created in users calendars. Previously, they could be repeated on a weekly basis. We have altered the configuration settings. Choose the regularity and set an end date when setting an appointment. Appointments can be set to a daily, weekly, bi weekly and monthly frequency.

The class timetable shows the scheduled courses for the students enrolled into that class. After numerous requests, we have aligned the colour scheme to be the same as the course schedule. Although note that if there are multiple courses for the same period these will still show in blue.

Student details

For schools using credits for subjects, we added this information to the enrollment tab of the student profile in one of releases last year. The count showed the total credits for the year, now we have added a second column which shows the current used credits determined by enrolment dates. This information can now be exported in quick reports.

Please note that the count will only work if course dates are restricted to single term dates, and still show the full amount if they are configured for the whole scholastic year.

Course Teachers have access to My Courses via their portal. This shows contact information regarding their students. It now is linked with the consents management and the information stored on their profiles. 

Assignments

We have some important changes being pushed for the assignment module. If you have any problems with the below then please contact the support desk for assistance.

When cloning assignments, we have implemented a control feature to not allow titles to be duplicated in the same course. The requirement was made as it affected the student transfer functionality. If assignments have the same title, an error will appear in when editing. Teachers should assign a number/letter prefix to the title to make them unique. 

Assignment status can now be configured to match your schools needs. These can now be edited in assignment configuration. You can customise whether the grades are to be included in averages or not. Choose the cell colour shown when viewing these in the assignment grade grid. 

We have changed how the assignments and assessments list of courses was being shown. This was designed to allow for search and auto complete functionality, rather than a drop down list. Mostly requested for administrators, and heads of school or departments. It will not affect the enrolment context for Teachers who will still be able to search only their courses.

In assignment configuration, MySchool has a comprehensive list of average calculations that can be applied to subjects for assessment purposes. This enables an average to be calculated over a term period. Teachers have requested a continuous average column to be added to the assignment grade grid. This will show a running average according to the current system date. This would need to be enabled for all courses in your instance. Please contact our support team if you would like to enable this column. 

Also note that students will see this average on the performance breakdown page. Check the url to see if you have this page mapped to your students portal. (grades_overview_inc_breakdown.php)

Bug fixes

Here is the list of fixes connected to errors flagged by our schools.

• Teacher attendance dashlet will now respect enrolment and employment contexts
• Certain statuses used when publishing assignments were not being exported correctly.
• A glitch was noted on student profiles, when entering into edit mode, the user would be moved to another tab. This should no longer occur.
• The ID cards available in data reports were not exporting. This was fixed.
• Trax import subject code NME now adheres to requirements