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SIS 2000+ Graduation Requirements Editor, Step 3

Step 3, Set-Up District Courses

In the District Courses database, it is important to select the Subject category under which each course will meet Graduation Requirements. While you are working on the Subject field, you may want to also check out the course's credit set-up.

Prerequisite -
Before you begin the process of defining which subject each course is associated with, the Subject Codes table will need to be set-up properly. It may have already been set-up, but you may want to check it to make sure that none of your subject areas were missed. To check it, launch the Table Editor and open the Subject Code (zsubject) table (Fig. 4). This table is where you name the different Subject categories that you will be using to link courses to graduation requirements. See Table Editor for more information on general procedures for setting up tables.

Fig. 4

Since you can set-up Requirements to tie transcript records to subject codes, you may want to make sure that each category you use in your graduation requirements is entered as a Subject. For instance, you may list both 'Algebra' and 'Mathematics' as subjects if you require that a student meet a particular Algebra requirement in addition to other Mathematics requirements. If you do not make such a distinction, the just entering Mathematics would suffice.

Another example would be to include both 'Physical Science' and 'Biological Science' in the Subject Codes table. You might do this if your Graduation Requirements include Physical Sciences in addition to Biological Science. You would then set the subject field for courses such as 'Biology' or 'Anatomy' to 'Biological Sciences,' and other courses such as 'Chemistry', 'Ecology', or 'Physics' would be set with 'Physical Science' in their Subject field.

Once the Subject Codes are set properly, exit the Table Editor and continue to the District Courses set up, as follows:

3.1 Open District Courses
From the SIS 2000+ Main Menu, open the System module. From the System Menu, launch the District Courses application.

3.2 Find a Course to edit
Using the navigation buttons in District Courses, select a target course to edit. Click on the Edit command button to activate the edit mode, indicated when the field turn from gray to white. (For more information on these procedures, see District Courses.)

3.3. Assign Subject to Courses
Go to the 'General' tab (Fig. 5). Using the drop-down list in the Subject field, pick the subject area that this course counts in meeting Graduation Requirements. This process must be completed for every course in the district that will be referenced for Graduation Requirements.

Fig. 5

3.4 Check Credits and Codes
To verify that the credits awarded for completion of this course and other codes were set-up properly, go to the 'Credits/Codes' tab in District Courses (Fig. 6). Check three areas of data as follows:

Fig. 6

3.4.1 Credit Awarded
The top few fields on this screen have to do with the amount of credit that will be awarded for completion of the course:

• Grad Credits -
  Enter how many credits are granted by completion of this course towards Graduation Requirements. These values will be standard within a district for all schools offering the same course. Here you are defining that successful completion of this course will give students 1 credit (or units) towards their Graduation Requirements for the subject 'Life Sciences'.
• GPA Credits -
  The value used in calculating GPA's. This value is normally the same as a credit, but it may be different.
• Credit Type -
  The type of credit awarded for this course (such as 'Semester Hour', 'Quarter Hour', 'Carnegie', etc). In the above example, 1 unit of Carnegie credit awarded for successful completion of the course.
• Variable Credit -
  Check here if variable credit is allowed in this course. To allow schools to give partial credit for a course, check Variable credit. In the above example, 0.5 units of credit could be awarded for completion of half, or only one semester, of the course.

NOTE: As you Save changes that affect a course's 'history' record (a change that affects GPA calculations or transcript information) you will be asked if you want to UPDATE the existing course record or CREATE a NEW course history record. If you choose to UPDATE, all existing transcript records will be affected by the change. If you CREATE NEW records, old transcript records will still point to the old information; new records will use the new information. For records entered manually, you will have to choose which set of course information you want to use for each course entered in Student Academic History based on what was recorded as the effective date of the different historic records.

3.4.2 GPA Calculations
The next set of fields deals with the calculations that will be involved in generating student's GPA's, and what marks constitute 'successful' completion of a course:

• GPA Level -
  This is a level indicator for calculating GPA for weighted marks. Up to ten GPA Levels can be defined for a school. Level '0' is generally used as the default GPA that the majority of your courses will use. (These levels are defined in the Mark Reporting Set-Up Process, through the Mark Values application). An 'Honors' or "Advanced Placement' course, for example, may use a different GPA scale, so the GPA Level field would be used to indicate which scale is used. This is linked directly to the next field, 'Mark Set'.
• Mark Set -
  From the drop-down list, select which Mark Set your GPA Level will be pulled from for GPA calculations. You may have several Mark Sets defined, each with its own group of GPA Levels; so you must designate which Mark Set the GPA Level you just entered is coming from. Available selections have been defined in the Mark Reporting Set-Up Process (Fig. 7).
  
  Also, within each Mark Set, you should have also defined Mark Values ('A', 'B', 'C', 'D', and 'F', for example). During that set-up you should have also designated which of those marks are counted in GPA calculations and which are counted towards Graduation Requirements. Marks with a check under 'Grad Cr' are counted as successful completion marks when posting records to a students transcript, which means that the student is awarded credit for that course on their transcript record (Fig. 7). In turn, those credits on the transcript record are counted as successful completion credits towards meeting Graduation Requirements.
  
  
  Fig. 7
  
  
  Fig. 7 above is an example of the Mark Values screen (from Mark Reporting menu, then Mark Values) with the Mark Set of 'Letter Marks (no +/-) displayed. Here you can see the two GPA scales used in this school. 'GPA Val 0' is the default, four-point scale. 'GPA Val 1' is the five-point scale this school uses for Advanced Placement courses. Also, under 'GPA Cr' and 'Grad Cr' you can see that all marks are included in the GPA calculations, but that the mark of 'F' does not count as successful completion of the course, and is not awarded Graduation Credits when it is posted to a students Academic History record (transcript).
  
  More information on the Mark Reporting Set-Up process, see Mark Reporting documentation.

3.4.3 Course Code Stored in Transcript

• SpeedeExpress Code -
  Whether or not you subscribe to SpeedeExpress, you may want to put a code for your courses in this field. It may very well be the exact same code that you use as the Course Code, or you may want to use a more 'generic' code that you assign to all 'Algebra 1' courses for example.

  You may want to do this because the SpeedeExpress code is stored with the transcript record for each course that ends up on the students' Academic History records. Since you may be entering courses into the transcript that are not offered at your school, that a student may have taken elsewhere, you may want to use the SpeedeExpress code to 'match' the added course to you existing, equivalent courses.

  To make those courses 'match' your equivalent course you should enter a SpeedeExpress code for your normal course, as well as for the transferred course, that is the same for both. That way, the two courses will have different course codes when you are setting-up for your scheduling process, so the correct one will be used for those purposes. But, when you enter the course into a student's Academic History, you can choose the specific course that the student completed and earned credit for. And, since the Speede Express codes are the same for both courses, when you are setting up Graduation Requirements, you'll only have to define that single, 'generic' Speede Express code as a required code and either course will count as credit in the specified category.