Aug 29th, 2019
Background
Edsby typically uses class information from the Student Information System (SIS) to create an Edsby Class for each subject a teacher is teaching.
In some organizations however the SIS only contains homeroom configurations. This is generally found at the elementary school level since there is often a standardized set of subjects offered for each grade level.
For such SIS configurations Edsby provides an “auto-expand” facility through which a single imported class section record from the SIS is expanded into a pre-defined set of additional classes that inherit the teacher(s ) and student(s) from the original class in a very flexible way.
Edsby Course Models
Edsby provides a Course Model facility that can be used to define a course model (template) for each unique Course Code offered in the organization.
Edsby can be configured to have a Course Model include a set of links to additional Course Models. Such a Course Model can be thought of as an auto-expand “master” class. When a student is enrolled into the master class the modelling system automatically creates and enrols the student into each of the sub-classes which match the student's filter criteria (currently just the Grade). The sub-classes are created using their respective models and inherit the teacher, term and room from the master.
The following diagram depicts how this works:
In the above diagram, a master model called “Homeroom” is linked to all of the elementary course models (only 4 shown) relevant for a particular program. These models each have an associated grade.
At import time a single section HRM001 is defined in the SIS and associated with the “Homeroom” course model by giving it the appropriate CourseID. A Grade 1 student is enrolled in section HRM001 as normal in the SIS. However when the Edsby import processor runs it inspects the “Homeroom” model and enrolls the student in a class corresponding to each linked model which matches the student filter criteria (Grade). In the example above the Grade 1 student enrolled in HRM001 would be enrolled in classes for Grade 1 Math, Grade 1 English, and Grade 1 Science all taught by the same homeroom teacher.
The Edsby classes are created when the first student matching the criteria is found. Subsequent students matching the same criteria are added to the already created class.
This approach handles split classes very well. For example, if there is a home room called “HRM3/4A that includes Grade 3 and Grade 4 students in it the Edsby auto-expand facility will create a set of Grade 3 and Grade 4 subject classes and assign the students to the appropriate classes based on grade.
Assigning Teachers to Auto-Expanded Classes
When Edsby creates a new class via the auto-expand facility the teacher assigned to the initial class (in the SIS) is automatically assigned to the auto-expanded classes. If the teacher is changed in the SIS this change is automatically propagated to the expanded classes.
In some cases a few of the expanded classes need to have a different teacher assigned. For example the auto-expansion set of classes may include specialty classes like Music and French that have a different teacher. Edsby’s “Add Staff to Class” feature enables a school administrator to quickly add a specialty teacher to multiple classes all at once through simple Class Zoom filtering.
Handling Multiple Different Expansion Lineups
Often a school district may have a few different programs within their elementary schools. For example they may offer a standard English program and a French Immersion program. The Edsby auto-expand facility handles that very easily. Simply define two auto-expand programs: “Homeroom” for the standard program and “Homeroom-FI” for the French Immersion program. As Homerooms are created they get associated with one or the other auto-expand model which creates the right lineup of subjects for the program.
Handling Special Classes
The auto-expand facility can also be used to create special classes in a very flexible way. This is useful for creating Special Education classes. For example an auto-expansion model can be defined that creates a Special Education Math class and Special Education Language class for each student assigned to a “homeroom” that is associated with the special education expansion model.
Edsby even supports an advanced modeling option that enable the specified homeroom to be “virtual” in that it won’t be visible to teachers or students. So districts can create a special education “homeroom” in their SIS and have that expand out to a set of special education classes (Math and English) without creating another homeroom class.
Configuring Edsby Auto Expand Models
The Edsby Auto-Expand facility is an advanced feature. Customers interested in using this should contact their Edsby customer success manager to discuss how to set this up for their Edsby site.