Cohorts

Overview

Cohorts act as an organizational tool that represents what your student cohorts are, which students are in them, and any applicable information about how you plan to manage hybrid (in-person vs remote) schedules for each cohort. By associating cohorts with rotation days, you can specify whether a particular grouping of students are expected to attend in-person or remotely for a given day. This association allows for a way to manage this designation on a macro scale and pushes these designations to the affected records on a more micro scale that allows for granular adjustment as needed.

In our ongoing effort to help you better manage complex scheduling scenarios this fall, particularly in-person and remote learners, we highly recommend using the cohort record type in Veracross, rather than creating COVID- or distance-learning-related attendance statuses or other solutions. It is a way of modeling the answer to the question, "When will a particular group of students be expected to attend classes in person and when will they be expected to attend remotely?" 

• Create as many year-specific cohorts as needed for you to model in-person and remote learners. Associate cohorts with specific rotation days and apply those associations to grading periods or even more granularly with specific date ranges.
• Populate the cohorts with an exact list of students and specify the time range of their participation using grading periods or specific date ranges.

Cohorts on the Student Record

The Cohorts tab on the student record contains three sub-tabs used to view upcoming expected in-person vs remote daily presence statuses and manage cohort assignment(s).

The Daily Schedule - Week Sub-tab

This sub-tab displays the student's expected in-person vs remote daily presence statuses for the current week.

The "Daily Schedule - Week" sub-tab on student records.

The Daily Schedule - ALL Sub-tab

This sub-tab displays the student's expected in-person vs remote daily presence statuses for all person cohort calendar day records that exist for the current school year.

The "Daily Schedule - ALL" sub-tab on student records.

The Schedule Sub-tab

This sub-tab allows you to manage the cohort schedule(s) for this student. 

The "Schedule" sub-tab on student records.

Determining the Active Cohort

Only one cohort membership is considered "active" for any given calendar day, regardless of the number of cohorts a student is assigned. The "active" cohort is generally defined by the record with the most specificity for the calendar day in question. Here's how that is determined:

• Use the record with override dates
• Use the record tied to a non-ALL grading period (e.g. give preference to a Trimester 1 cohort assignment over an ALL cohort assignment)
• Use the record with an override date on the cohort day record
• Use the record where cohort day record is tied to a non-ALL grading period
• Use the record that was most recently added

Workflows

Finding or Creating a Cohort

Find cohorts and add new ones on the System homepage.

You can create as many year-specific cohorts as you need to. 

• Cohorts let you specify in-person and remote days associated with your existing rotation days. 
• Associate the in-person/remote status with particular grading periods or specify override start and end dates.

Adding Students to a Cohort

Once you have added a cohort, add the students via the "Students" tab. Add them one at a time or in batch:

• Add students one a time by clicking the "Add Record..." button and searching.
• Add students in batch using this workflow:
  1. In another tab, create a query that shows you the students you want to add to a particular cohort. Be sure that the Person ID field is displayed.
  2. Copy all of the values in the Person ID field from the query results. To do this, type Ctrl + Shift + C (PC) or Cmd + Shift + C (macOS)  and select the Person ID field. Tip: You can select certain rows to copy. Learn more about copying data in Axiom.
  3. Click "Add Record..." on the "Students" tab of the cohort record.
  4. Click the magnifying glass to bring up the advanced search window.
  5. Paste the results (Ctrl + V (PC) or Cmd + V (MacOS)) in the Person ID field. It will paste a semicolon-delimited list.
  6. Click "Run Query."
  7. The same people from your query are shown. To select them all, Shift+Click on the last record in the list and then click "Select Person." rather than creating COVID- or distance-learning-related attendance statuses or other solutions.

Generating Person Cohort Calendar Day Records

The record tying a particular student to a cohort and an in-person vs remote presence status for a particular calendar day is called "Person Cohort Calendar Day". These records are generated using the "Refresh Student Cohort Days" procedure from the action menu on the cohort record (all students assigned to that cohort) and/or the student record (single student).

The "Refresh Student Cohort Days" action on the cohort record.

Stopping a Cohort Entirely

If you wish to stop using a cohort on a certain day, use the end date on the rotation day and then run the "Refresh Student Cohort Days" procedure from the action menu.

Emailing Parents of Cohort Students

The new "Cohort" function field makes it easy to send an email to the parents of students assigned to a specific cohort - watch the short video below for a quick how-to.

Queries and Function Fields

The Cohort Daily Logistics Queries

To help with large-scale reporting about in-person vs remote daily presence statuses, we've added two new queries to the Today homepage. You can find these queries in the Daily Logistics section.

The Cohorts daily logistics queries on the Today homepage.

Building a My Students' Weekly Presence Query

We are working on further integrating this new functionality with existing portals functionality. In the interim, we want to provide you with a way to communicate with your teachers about the expected in-person vs remote daily presence statuses for their students, so we are advising you to create a "My Students' Presence Statuses for this Week" query and publish the query results in your faculty portal. We recommend using query 522665 as a starting point, modifying it to suit your needs, and saving your own version of this query.

The Cohort Function Field

The "Cohort" function field in a query design.

This function field allows you to query on students who are assigned to a specific cohort for a specific date. The date parameter defaults to the {today} value, meaning that results will be based on records that exist for the current calendar day. If you intend to report on a date in the future or past, don't forget to specify the date parameter prior to running the query. This field is available in all queries built on the Student query template (Student Info -> Scheduling) as well as any template that uses it as a link category, e.g. the Class Enrollment query template.

The Cohort Status Function Field

The "Cohort Status" function field in a query design.

This function field allows you to query on the presence status (in-person vs remote) for students for a specific date. The date parameter defaults to the {today} value, meaning that results will be based on records that exist for the current calendar day. This field is available in all queries built on the Student query template (Student Info -> Scheduling) as well as any template that uses it as a link category, e.g. the Class Enrollment query template.

How Do I Find Students Not Assigned to a Cohort for a Specific Date?

Configuring and managing complex cohort scenarios can be harrowing but building a report to find students who are not assigned to a cohort for a specific date isn't. 

Starting from a "Find Students" query:

1. Add the Cohort function field (the one with the orange "Fn" icon next to it).
2. Set the field to "is one of" and "None".
3. Specify the date you want to report on using the "Date" parameter.
4. Run the query.

Security

We have a new supplemental security role called Cohort_Admin that allows users to add and manage cohort records. 

The following security roles have read-only access to cohort records by default:

• Admissions_1
• Admissions_2
• Board
• Business_1
• Development_1
• Development_2
• Division_Head_0
• Division_Head_1
• Division_Head_2
• Division_Head_3
• Faculty_1
• Faculty_2
• Faculty_3
• Medical_1
• Medical_2
• Other_Programs
• Staff_1
• Staff_2
• Staff_3
• Staff_4