School Year Setup for Remote Learning

Where to Start

To begin, choose School Year Setup from the Administration Tab.

The school Administrator may want to work with the school Programmer to complete this setup. This enhancement uses the data imported from STARS along with the information a school Administrator will enter into the new School Year Setup page.  This setup is optional - if not used, schedules will show as they did previously without a remote indicator and teachers will assign work to the entire class.

Schedules Section

The Schedules section defines school days, including the start and end of the term, school holidays and the number of cycle days for your course schedules. There are three areas to setup in the Schedules section, Term dates, Non-Attendance Days and Course Schedule Cycle. 

Term Date Range

What do I need to complete this setup?

The school calendar will provide the information needed to complete this section

This area will define the start and end dates for the current term (name shown in the title of this window).  Annualized schools will use the full school year.  Click the pencil at the upper right to edit the dates. You must set up term dates to see student schedules. 

Choose the First Day of School and the Last Day of School for the term and click OK.  

Non-Attendance Days

What do I need to complete this setup?

The school calendar will provide the information needed to complete this section

This area allows you to set any non-attendance day within the current term.  There is no need to set Saturday and Sunday as non-attendance days.  Click the + at the upper right to add a new non-attendance day.  You can also edit or delete a current non-attendance day by clicking the pencil or trash can to the right of the date.

When adding or editing a date, choose the date from the calendar and click OK.

Course Schedule Cycle

What do I need to complete this setup?

• If the school uses a 5 day (Monday through Friday) schedule, you do not need any information for this section.  
• If the school uses a non-5 day rotating schedule, have the school calendar with the cycle days available.

Choose the number of days in your course schedule cycle from STARS.  The default setting is a 5 day schedule (M-F).   The dropdown allows for 2-day to 10-day rotations - choose your schedule from the dropdown (if your school has a longer than 10-day schedule, please contact us).

If the school is on a 5 day schedule, there is no additional setting needed in this section.  If your school is on any other schedule, click the gears at the upper right to continue the setup.

As the default is a 5 day schedule, the settings window will open as it appears below.  Notice that weekends and non-attendance days are not listed on the School Day Date list.  Click the Precalculate button at the upper left to set the schedule for your school’s rotation.  

The purpose of the screen is to map the day of the week to your schedule cycle day.  For example, day 1 of a 6 day schedule may begin on a Monday, but the following week it will be on a Tuesday.  

After clicking Precalculate, your cycle days will be mapped in order to each attendance date.  If this matches your cycle calendar exactly, click OK.  However, we know our schools and that you may need to equalize the days by going out of cycle order.  This screen allows you to make those adjustments.

To make adjustments to the mapping, start at the beginning of the school term and scroll to the correct date and choose the correct cycle day from the dropdown.  You can also click Skip One to get to the correct cycle day.  

If this is a single day change, i.e., your schedule is Day 2, Day 3, Day 1, Day 5, Day 6..., the adjustment is complete.  However, if you are changing the remainder of the cycle at that date, i.e. Day 2, Day 3, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3…, simply click Resume Here and IO Classroom will automatically recalculate the mapping for you.  Repeat this process until you get to the end of term date then click Ok.

Beneath the mapping table, you can see the total number of times each cycle day occurs in the term.

Cohort Configuration

What do I need to complete this setup?

• The blended learning schedule chosen for the school
• A list of the student groups that have common in school and remote days.  We recommend an excel spreadsheet of OSIS numbers for an easy copy and paste into IO Classroom.

This section setup includes 2 parts.  The school In-School/Remote blended model and the Student Groups.

Setting the In-School/Remote blended model

If you are using one of the Chancellor recommended models (listed below), you can simply choose that option from the Preset Options Dropdown and IO Classroom will complete the settings for you and move on to the Student Grouping instructions.  If your school has designed a completely custom model, choose Custom.

Chancellor Model Descriptions

Setting Up a Custom Model

If the school created its own blended model, choose Custom Model from the Preset Options dropdown.  Additional dropdown options will appear.

Attendance Cycle Lengths: Enter the number of days before the group pattern for attendance repeats.

Always in School Student Group: If your model includes a group of students who will always be in school, choose the letter that will represent that group.

Number of Student Groups: Choose the total number of attendance groups you have in your model.  The number of groups should include blended students, full remote students and full in-school students.

• Students should be grouped if they have all common in-school and remote days
• Group D will automatically be set to 100% remote

Based on the above selections, a grid view will be created as follows:

• The day of the week will be shown across the top
• The number of weeks needed to repeat your attendance group pattern will be shown on the side (based on Attendance Cycle Length selection)
• Group D will be displayed every day as remote
• If selected, the in-school group will be displayed in blue (based on Always In-School Student Group)
• Drop down menus will allow you to set the in-school group pattern for blended students for all attendance days.  For example, the screenshot below shows Group A in in-school the first Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Group B is in school the first Thursday and Friday.

Setting Up Student Attendance Groups

The final step in the setup process is to place the students into the proper attendance group.  All students with common in-school/remote days should be placed into the same group.  Group D should be created for 100% remote students as well as a group for 100% in-schools students (if needed).

All students will begin in Group A.  To move students to their proper Attendance group, simply add them to the new group.  They will automatically be deleted from the previous group.To add students to the group, click the icon to the right of the group name.  Groups can be edited manually or by uploading a list of OSIS numbers. 

Adding Students Manually

To add a student manually, check the box to the left of the student’s name and click Save.  This method is recommended for adjusting student groups after the initial bulk group set up.

Adding Students in Bulk

For the initial setup of the attendance groups, we recommend you use this upload feature.  Click Paste Entries at the lower left on the Group Edit screen.

To add students in bulk, you will need a list (such as from a column of a spreadsheet) of student OSIS numbers.  Delete the Example values in the window, then copy and paste the list of ID numbers from your group list into the Paste Entries window.  The list should be vertical, one number per row and not be separated by commas or other characters, which is why a spreadsheet works well.  Click Add to Group to save your changes.  The new students will appear in the group lists on the main setup page.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT NAMING GROUPS

Attendance groups are automatically named Group A, Group B, etc.  These groups will be available to be used when running attendance reports and downloads.  We strongly suggest that you use a different naming convention for any other groups you and your staff create in IO Classroom to avoid having multiple groups with the same name.

Previewing The Setup

The At School Student Preview will show you which group is scheduled to be in-school based on the saved setup.  The dot under the date indicates the blended group that is in school that day.  The entire term can be viewed or you can review a single month.  

Choosing a single group from the dropdown will highlight that groups in-school days.