SIS 2000+ Career Plan Editor

Last update: 09/02/2000 jmm

The Career Plan Editor is a means to define required and suggested courses for a specific group of students sharing similar achievements or goals. For example, college bound and honor students will require more advanced courses than students who will not be continuing their education. By defining specific courses or groups of courses for these students to take, the scheduling system can help counselors keep their students on track by generating and approving the appropriate courses for each grade level. Course requests can be generated from within the Career Plan Editor by executing the "Generate Course Requests" procedure. The generated course requests can then be used by the various other scheduling applications, such as Student Loader, Course Requests Editor, and Student Schedule Editor.

1. Open the Career Plan Editor program
From the SIS 2000+ Main Menu, click on the Scheduling icon button. From the Scheduling Menu, click on the Career Plan icon button. The opening screen (Fig. 1) will default to the first Career Plan in the district database, sorted alphabetically.

Fig. 1 - main screen

Screen layout:
The items in a Career Plan are displayed in a summary list; sorted in ascending order by grade level.

Grade -
Recommended (or required) grade level for enrollment in the course.
Typ(e) -

C = Course. A single course (as defined in the District Courses database).
G= Group. A group of courses (as defined in the Group Editor program)
T= Team. A group of course sections (as defined in the Team Editor program)

Code -
Identification code for Course, Group. or Team.
Description -
Description of Course, Group, or Team
Alternate for -
The name of another course (or team) that this course is (or team) an alternate for, if applicable.

2. Find a Career Plan
Career plans can be located using either the VCR buttons or the List command, as follows:

Scroll through career plan records backward or forward using the VCR buttons at the bottom of the screen.

Click on the List command button to view a list all career plans in alphabetical order (Fig. 2). Highlight the desired plan to be viewed and click on the Select button to go to that record.

Fig. 2

3. Create a new Career Plan

3.1 Initiate

From anywhere in the Career Plan editor, click on the New command button. The 'Enter new career plan name' screen will appear (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

3.2 Enter and save a name for the new plan
Use care in naming a new career plan. A career plan name cannot be deleted or renamed once it has been saved. After entering a name, click on the Add command button within the New Career Plan screen to save the new name and proceed to the next step, or Cancel to abort. The program automatically searches for duplicate names and will not allow duplicate names to be entered. The view will revert to the Career Plan Editor screen in the read-only mode, displaying the new Career Plan name at the top (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4

3.3 Enter items
"Items" added to a Career Plan are basically courses which will, in turn, generate course requests. Most items will be of the "Course" type but course requests can also be generated by adding "Team" and "Group" items to the Plan.

Reminder:
Keep in mind that, although all courses defined in the District Course database are available as selections when creating a Career Plan, only courses that have been assigned to a student's school and track via the Track Course Selection program will be available as course requests for that student when it comes time for scheduling.

3.3.1 Activate the entry mode

Click the Add command button. This action will open the 'Add Career Plan Item' form (Fig. 5) and set the focus to the Type field. The other fields will not be enabled at first. You must enter data in a certain order to activate data entry for the other fields, as follows:

Fig. 5

3.3.2 Select a Type
Select a type of item to add, Course, Group, or Team, in the drop-down list of the Type field (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6

After a Type is selected the Description field will be enabled.

3.3.3 Enter a Description or Code
Items to add can be selected by their description or by their ID code, as follows:

Fig. 7

Select an item from the drop-down list in the Description field. The selections available will depend on the Type of item selected in the previous step. When a description is entered, its corresponding ID code will automatically be displayed in the Code field.
If the description of an item is not known, enter its ID code in the Code field. If it is a valid code the item's description will automatically be displayed in the Description field.

3.3.4 Select a grade level
Select a Grade from the drop-down list, activated by the field button. A grade level is required before an entry can be saved.

3.3.5 Select an alternate
In the Alternate For field, select an item that this item is an alternate for, if applicable. (Alternates are not allowed for Groups). Only items that have already been added to the current Career Plan will be available as selections (Fig. 8); and then only those items assigned to the same grade level. Therefore, the first item added cannot be an alternate for any other item because there are no other items in the list.

Fig. 8

3.3.6 Save the item

Fig. 9 - sample item completed

When an item is complete (Fig. 9), click on the Save command button to save the new item. The view will return to the main screen displaying the added item in the list (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10 - sample summary list in progress

3.3.7 Add another item
Repeat Steps 3.3.1 - 3.3.6 to add more items to the Career Plan.

4. Edit a Career Plan item

4.1 Find a career plan
(see Step 2)

4.2 Select an item to edit
Click on the target line until the item is selected by a small, black pointer in the leftmost column (Fig. 11).

Fig. 11 - "Wld Hist" selected

4.2 Activate the edit form

Click on the Edit command button to open the 'Edit Career Plan Item' form (Fig. 12).

Fig. 12

4.3 Edit data
Use the Tab key to move from field to field. Edit data as needed.

4.4 Save changes
Click on the Save command button to save changes, or Undo to cancel.

5. Add items
New items can be added to an existing Career Plan as follows:

5.1 Find a Career Plan
(see Step 2)

5.2 Add an item
(follow Steps 3.3.1 - 3.3.6)

6. Delete an item
Items can be deleted from an existing Career Plan, however, for the sake of database integrity, a Career Plan itself cannot be deleted once it has been created. Also, an item cannot be deleted if there are Alternates for it.

6.1 Find a career plan
(see Step 2)

6.2 Select an item to delete
In the summary list on the main screen, click on the target line until the item is selected by a small, black pointer in the leftmost column (Fig. 11).

6.3 Click on the Delete command button. In the dialog box that appears (Fig. 13), answer "Yes" to confirm the deletion, or "No" to cancel.

Fig. 13

7. Generate Course Requests
One way to generate course requests is to initiate the Gen procedure from this application. According to the parameters selected, course requests will be automatically generated and placed in the Course Request Editor program and the Student Schedule Editor where they can be used in the scheduling process. However, only those courses which have been assigned to a student's school and track via the Track Course Selection program can appear as course requests for that student.

Prerequisites:
Individual students who will require a specific career plan must have that plan selected in the Career Plan field in their Student Editor record ('Misc' information screen) (See Student Editor, Sec. 9).

7.1 Initiate Generate Course Requests

From main screen, click on the Gen command button. This action opens the 'Generate' dialog screen (Fig. 14)

Fig. 14 - default parameters

7.2 Define parameters
Enter data in fields as follows:

Generate for Students with Career Plan -
This field will specify the Career Plan that will be used to generate course requests. There are three types of selections possible:

Predefined Plan
Select a predefined Career Plan from the list (Fig. 15). All students who have the matching Plan specified in their Student Editor record will receive the generated course requests from this Plan.

Fig. 15

<Any>
By selecting <Any> (Fig. 16), course requests will be generated for all existing Career Plans according to each student's assigned Plan. Provisions for students with no assigned Plan can then be made in the For Students with no Career Plan, Use: field below (Figs. 19 & 21).

Fig. 16

<No Career Plan>
Selecting <No Career Plan> (Fig. 17) will generate course requests only for those student who have no assigned Plan in their Student Editor records. When using this option a Career Plan to use must be entered in the For Students with no Career Plan, Use: field below (Figs. 21 & 22).

Fig. 17

Track -
Select the target attendance track for which the course requests will be generated. (defaults to the logged on faculty member's track)
Grade -
Select a grade level from the drop-down list. To apply generated course requests to all grades, select "<Any>".
Student Group -
To select a student group to receive the generated requests, click on the Change Group command button. This action opens a link to the Group Editor application (Fig. 18).

Fig. 18

Create a student group on the fly or select a predefined group from the list and click on the Select command button to copy that selection back to the Generate dialog screen. See Group Editor for more details on defining student groups. To ignore student groups in the generation of course requests, leave the field blank.

For Students with No Career Plan, Use: -
This field determines how to process students who have no assigned Plan. There are several types of possible selections:

<None>

Fig. 19

Selecting <None> (Fig. 19) will cause the Generate process to skip over all students who have no Plan assigned in their Student Editor record, that is, no course requests of any kind will be generated for those students. This is the default selection (Fig. 19).

Predefined Plan -
Select a Plan to apply to all students who have no Plan assigned:

If there is a predefined Plan selected in the Generate for Students with Career Plan field above (Fig. 15) then the selections in this field (Fig. 20) will be limited to <None> or the Plan selected in the first field.

Fig. 20

If <Any> was selected in the Generate for Students with Career Plan field above (Fig. 16) then <None> plus all the predefined Plans will be available for selection in this field (Fig. 21).

Fig. 21

If <No Career Plan> was selected in the Generate for Students with Career Plan field above (Fig. 17) then a predefined Plan must be selected in this field in order to complete the Generate process (Fig. 22). All predefined Plans will be available for selection.

Fig. 22

If no Plan is selected in this field under these circumstances, the following error message will occur when the Gen command is executed for the final time (Fig. 23):

Fig. 23

Clear Unlocked Requests -
Check this box to clear out any previous course requests left in the Course Request Editor program that have been left unlocked. These might be course requests left over from a previous a Career Plan generation procedure (which are entered as "unlocked" by default), or manually entered course requests that were designated as unlocked in the Course Requests Editor. (See Course Requests Editor, Step 3.4)
Clear Locked Requests -
Check this box to clear out any previous course requests left in the Course Request Editor program that have been left locked. These might be manually entered course requests, which are entered as locked by default.
Allow Duplicate Requests -
In some cases students may need to take the same course more than once during a school year, such as a teacher's aide course. Selecting this option will allow duplicate course requests to be registered in the Course Request Editor.

Fig. 24 - sample Gen parameters

Use the Reset command button to clear data and return to the default parameters (or Done to exit the procedure with generating requests).

7.3 Execute Generate process
After all parameters are set correctly, click on the Gen button again, or Done to cancel the process. Confirm the parameters in the dialog box that appears (Fig. 25) by answering "Yes" to continue, or "No" to cancel.

Fig. 25

If "Yes", a gauge will appear to mark the progress of the Gen procedure (Fig. 26). Allow a few minutes to complete the calculations. Press Esc to cancel the processing.

Fig. 26

7.4 Exit procedure
When the gauge disappears, the Gen procedure will be completed and a confirmation message will appear (Fig. 27).

Fig. 27

Click "OK" to return to the Generate dialog screen (Fig. 24). Repeat the Steps 7.2 - 7.3 to generate more course requests or click on the Done command button to exit the Generate mode and return to the main screen.

7.5 View Generated Course Requests
Course requests that were generated by the preceding method can be viewed on a per student basis via the Course Requests Editor program (Fig. 28) or the Student Schedule Editor (Fig. 29). In either of these applications, the requests generated by the Career Plan Gen procedure may be mixed in with requests generated from other methods. There are certain other qualifiers that determine what Career Plan course requests will register in a student's record:

Only course requests that match the assigned grade level of a student will register in their course requests records.
Only those courses that have been assigned to a student's school and track via the Track Course Selection program can appear as course requests for that student. District courses that have not been assigned to a particular school/track are not available to be taught and therefore cannot be registered as a request. Such courses are considered invalid by the Course Request Editor and will register as: "<Invalid Course>" (Fig. 28) or not show up at all in the Student Schedule Editor (Fig. 29).

For more details, see Course Requests Editor and Student Schedule Editor.

Fig. 28 - sample course requests

Fig. 29 - sample course requests

If an expected course is missing from a student's course requests after executing the Career Plan Gen procedure, go back to the Track Course Selection program to verify that course's assignment or check the Grade field for the course in the Career Plan Editor.

8. Exit program
In the read-only mode, click on the Quit command button to exit the Career Plan Editor.

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