Academics Orientation

Overview

In this unit, get an overview of the structure and concepts you'll need to dive into Veracross academics. Work through all of them now, but it may be helpful to revisit some of them towards the end of this learning module once you have put flesh on the concepts introduced here. 

School-Level Homepages

After watching this video answer or complete the following:

1. What are the Action menu items on the school level homepages?
2. What is the difference between the Find Students query on the school-level homepages compared to the query on other homepages?
3. Quick review: What makes a person a "student" in Veracross terms?
4. Who is taking a middle school science class this year? (This reviews your query knowledge; start with Find Class Enrollments on the appropriate school-level homepage) Extra credit: subtotal and sort by student.
5. What are the "Where is Student/Faculty Now?" queries? Where are the Abbotts now?
6. Look at the query design of three or four queries in the Reports section of all three school-level homepages. Pick one, modify it to filter down results, and save it to your personal workspace with an appropriate name. 

Grade Levels, School Levels, and Grading Periods

After watching this video answer or complete the following:

1. Where would you go to find or do the following:
   • Publish the Q3 report card?
   • View or update the names of grade levels (e.g., "Grade 12" to "12th Grade")?
   • Ensure that only high schoolers get user accounts?
   • Double-check when the first (or last) day of school is?

Academic System Parameters

After watching this video answer or complete the following:

1. What are system parameters? Where can you access them?
2. "My gradebook still defaults to the last quarter," says a teacher. How do you fix it?
3. "My schedule doesn't look right. I'm not in these classes," says a student. Where should you start troubleshooting?
4. You want to see what a student's schedule will look like next term without disrupting what everyone sees in their portal. How can you do this?

Academic Queries on the System Homepage

After watching this video answer or complete the following:

1. Find all 11th grade science classes (or a different grade if you don't have 11th grade students). 
2. Find all classes with zero (0) term credit hours. Subtotal by course type and sort by course type and class ID. How can you expand/collapse all of the subtotal headers at once?
3. Assuming it is the 17-18 school year, how many classes were offered last year?
4. Pick a student and find which classes they took last year and this year. Subtotal by year and sort by year and then class. Exclude classes they withdrew from.
5. Pick a student and find their term grades for this year. Exclude qualitative grades. Subtotal by grading period. Sort by grading period and then class. 
6. Find report cards and transcripts for any three students. What is the difference between a report card or transcript record and a report card or transcript document?

Grade Conversion Scales

After watching this video answer or complete the following:

1. What is a grade conversion scale? 
2. How many courses use the upper school scale? 
3. How would you adjust the grade conversion scale for a student? (hint: find a class enrollment record and look on the Other tab)

The Academic Hierarchy

After watching this video answer or complete the following:

1. On what homepage is academic configuration done?
2. Describe the department/subject/course/class hierarchy.
3. Give a possible department/subject/course/class for (adjust grade levels accordingly if you do not have all of these grade levels at your school):
   • 2nd grade homeroom
   • 6th grade music
   • 11th grade AP physics
4. How do you add a department chair?
5. Where would you access the following options?
   1. color that classes are on schedule documents
   2. abbreviation of a subject name
   3. curriculum type (and what the heck is curriculum type?)
   4. include on a report card
   5. make sure attendance is enabled for a class
   6. show/hide classes in the parent/student portals (how would you quickly show/hide all classes?)

Basic Course Configuration

After watching this video answer or complete the following:

1. What is a course in Veracross? What distinguishes it from a class?
2. How would you add a new course, for instance, a sixth grade earth science course? 
   • How would you include it on report cards, but not transcripts or GPA?
   • How would you make it available for requests and included in the scheduler?
   • How would you set the curriculum type: by grading period and numeric grading with the lower school scale?
   • How would you give it an "Honors" classification?

The Review Class Config Query

After watching this video answer or complete the following:

1. Name five things that can be easily adjusted on this query.
2. Walk through the process of updating all third grade classes to track class attendance.
3. How could you update all eleventh grade classes to hide all assignment information in the parent portal? 
4. Design the query: subtotal and sort by school level and grade; only show active classes. How many classes are there?
5. How many classes trigger imperfect attendance? 
6. How many classes use each grading scale?

Class Detail Screens

After watching this video answer or complete the following:

1. What are class permissions?
2. How could you add a teacher's aide to a class with the same permissions as the primary teacher?
3. How do you change the primary teacher of a class? 
4. What is the process for updating the Class ID and Description fields of a class?
5. How can you cancel a class?
6. How would you email the parents of the students in a class?  Where can you see a list of parents who would get the email?
7. How could you see when a class is scheduled to meet?
8. How do you add students to a class roster? 

Add a Class

In this "application" lesson, we'll add a class, considering various course and class configuration options.

After watching this video answer or complete the following:

1. Walk through the proccess for adding a new second grade music class associated with a second grade homeroom.
2. How would you add students to it?