1.  You will notice that E10  is completing each row with default values for MaxS (the maximum number of students in each sports class), #C and Years.  Change the number of MaxS to be an appropriate number for that sport and leave #C set to 1 for the time being.  Once you have collected the students preferences, you can increase the number of classes that will be created depending on how popular the sport it. 

2.  In the Parameters table, leave the #Elective Lines to 1 as each student will only have 1 sport they are allocated to and set the number of #Reserve prefs to an appropriate number in case the student misses out on their main choice.  This could be 1, 2 or 3,...,  Set the ‘Periods per line’ to the number of sport periods allocated in your cycle.  Leave the remaining values as is, unless you want to balance gender distribution in your sports classes, in which case change this value to ‘Y’.  You may also choose to ‘Rotate’ the classes if you want to manage summer and winter activities separately or on a term by term basis. 

3.  Set up any Rules that apply.  For example, if there are popular sports and you don’t want a student to be able to choose more than than 2 of the popular sports, you can use the Groups column in the Courses table and the Rules table to ensure that students can only pick 2 of the popular sports.  Do this by allocating the same letter of the alphabet to the Groups column in the Courses table for the popular sports, such as the letter A.  In the Rules table, click in the first cell and choose, ‘no more than’ from the pop out list.  As soon as you have done this, E10 will then auto-complete the statement and put ‘2’ in the next cell and an ‘A’ in the following cell.  This rule will now be enforced when the student is entering their sports choices and when the lines are being generated.  The student will be prevented from choosing more than 2 of the 1 unit sports from the popular group A. 

4.  As this rule was set up in the ‘Sports’ Year, it is a global rule that will apply to all Years in the Sports_elecs dataset, however you can also set individual rules at each year level by changing the ‘Year’ drop down to the respective year.  When you do this, you will notice that the ‘Students’ table is now populated with the appropriate student information for that year, the Courses table remains the same and the Rules table is now empty.  For example, you could create an additional rule for Year 7 only, that students must choose at least 1 unit from Group B. 

5.  Finally, you will notice that the content of the Courses table will be grey in colour instead of black.  This means that this is not the year in which the classes will eventually be created. 

 You are now ready to synchronise and test your WebChoice form. 

Synchronising and Testing Your Web Form

With the Sport year and the Sport_elecs displayed in the two drop down lists, go to Lines > WebChoice > Sync form, to synchronise your web form and in doing so, upload your Sport electives dataset to the web. 

 There are 4 tabs in this window; Parameters, Labels, Text and Emails.   

1.  In the ‘Parameters’ tab, default values will be displayed in the cells shown.  As each sport elective is considered 1 unit, change the ‘Minimum allowed units’ and the ‘Maximum allowed units’ to 1, as you want each student to choose at least and at most 1 sport.  Change the ‘Number of main options’ fields to 1, as again, each student will only be given 1 sport choice.  Change the ‘Number of reserve options’ fields to 2, or more, depending on how many reserve options you are allowing the students to make.  Finally, change the ‘Minimum required reserve units’ to 1, or more, depending on how many reserve sport choices, the students are allowed to choose.   

2.  Click on the ‘Labels’ tab.  These labels will be displayed on the WebChoice form online.  You can enter any text here.  You can use the ‘Groups’ cells, to show only Sports that belong to that group (as determined in the Courses table) to be displayed in the drop down list on the form. 

3.  Click on the ‘Text’ tab.  This text will be displayed on your WebChoice form to the students.  As there is a word limit on this field, please keep any text inserted here brief. 

4.  Click on the ‘Emails’ tab.  Check the checkboxes if you want the students choices emailed to them and/or the administrator.  Click on one of the radio buttons to choose who the email to the students is coming from and enter the Administrator's email address if desired. 

5.  Click the ‘Sync’ button.  Upon completion, you will receive a message from E10 that the upload and publishing has been successful.   

6.  Make sure you thoroughly test your WebChoice form online before issuing web codes to students.  Go to Lines > WebChoice > Test form online to test that the form functions as expected.  You will be provided with a test web code which has been copied to your clipboard so you can easily paste it into the form in the browser.. 

7.  Test different scenarios that the students could do in the form and ensure that the rules you have set up are functioning as expected.  Make any necessary changes to ensure the form functions as wish.  

 You are now ready to issue your web codes to the students and capture your students preferences. 

 Capturing Sport Choices 

 To distribute the web codes to students via email, you will need to ensure that you have the students email addresses in your timetable file under ‘Students > Student data’.  If you can’t see the ‘Email’ field go to the ‘More’ menu while in the Student data screen and click on ‘Show Email and Phone’ to toggle it to display.  If you do have student email addresses in your file, go to ‘Lines > WebChoice > Email webcodes’ to issue the webcodes to students.. 

 If you don’t have the students email addresses in the file, you can distribute student webcodes via a mail merge function provided by E10 under ‘Lines > WebChoice > Export webcodes (mail-merge)’.  This will download the students webcodes to a csv file on your desktop, which can then be mail-merged into an email or document and sent out separately.  

 Once the students have their webcodes, give them a sufficient period of time to log in and make their sport selections online, as per the ‘Close form:’ date set in step 15 above. 

 After the selection period has ended and the form closed, you are ready to download the students sports selections.  Go to ‘Lines > WebChoice > Get student choices from web’.  The students choices should then be pulled into your etz file. 

This data can then be used to GENERATE the sport class lists by clicking the ‘Generate lines’ button, or under ‘Lines > Generate lines’.  You can generate and regenerate lines any number of times, so you can consider different scenarios; i.e what happens if you limit class sizes by the activity, create additional classes if the sport is popular and assign students to activities by priority to best fit.   Assigning individual student priority (Pri) levels will control the assignment of students to sports classes to a finer degree.  For example, in the event that you want the Year 10 students to have preference over the Year 7 students, the higher the ‘Pri’ number the higher the priority. You can even create additional rules such as, students can select Cross country as both a summer and a winter sport, but only Swimming in summer. 

 While generating sport class lists is not difficult, using E10 vastly automates the process, and ensures a very fair assignment of activities to the cohort using the traditional E10 elective line algorithms. Sport may be only one ‘line’, yet the resultant class lists are high quality. 

 Creating Sports Classes 

Once you have captured Sport choices using WebChoice and are happy with the number of, size and distribution of the sport class lists, you create the sports classes, by clicking the Create classes’ button, or going to ‘Lines > Create classes’.  As mentioned previously, these classes will be created in the ‘Sport’ year that you created in Step 1 of this process, and will have a separate class list associated with each activity or even multiple class lists for each activity, depending on popularity and your required staff:sport supervision ratios.

 In the ‘Create Classes’ dialog box, accept the default values, and click the ‘Ok’ button.  You will then be taken to the ‘Classes > Class data’ screen for the ‘Sport’ year, and you will see your newly created and populated classes displayed.  The Course Code you determined when setting up your sports courses in Step 9 will be prefixed by the Year (Sport) and suffixed by a number (1, 2...) to identify the class number (i.e SportRELX1).   

 Complete the Classes > Class data screen for the Sports classes as follows:  

• Faculty = NoFaculty

• Colour = Green (think grass!)

• #Per = 0+4 means zero teaching periods, but four periods off-line.  This will load sport as four periods to staff, but some schools consider sport as being only two or perhaps three periods, or no load whatsoever – such as where all staff are expected to take sport on top of their teaching load. To vary the load credit for sport, specify #Per as 0+4(2) for two period loading, or #Per=0+4(0) for no loading at all.  If your sports periods are during ‘online’ periods on your grid, as Year 11 and 12 do not participate in sport, or your Junior and Senior Sport is held at different times, the entry in this column would be 4(x) where 4 is the number of online periods and x is the load credit.  In this situation, ensure you hard code the sports periods in the ‘Periods’ column below, to ensure that no other classes are timetabled during that time.

• TimePattern = Anything (So sport does not appear in spread quality reports) 

• Line = Line S or Line 1 (default). As the classes are now activity specific, they will be assigned to a ‘Line’ (i.e Line 1) as they have been created based on student choice, you can’t auto-populate sport classes by float groups.

• MaxStu = <Blank>, unless perhaps some sports have a maximum class size limit.

• Periods = Wed5-6 or as per your own school sport periods.  If you leave this blank, you will need to manually assign the sports classes to the relevant sports periods in the Classes > Year timetable screen.

• TeacherPref = <Blank>, or perhaps with preferred staff listed for each sports class. Double click in this cell to display the Subject teacher set for that class.  If you receive a message “There are no teachers listed as options for ‘nnnnn’”, click the ‘Edit Set’ button to go to the Subject teacher set for that sport.  In the blank Teacher Codes cell on the right, enter the Teacher Code(s) of the preferred teachers for this sports class(es).  If there is more than one class (#Classes), ensure you have a matching number of teacher codes to the class number. 

• RoomPref = “None” ( with the possible exception of one or two sport classes being listed as booking the gym(s) or oval - and doing so using the ‘Only’ rooming tag) 

 With individual sport classes set up in the ‘Sport’ year, there is now no need to create or retain Sport classes in the individual years if you have them. Assuming sport is correctly coded into off-line periods, all students will be assigned sport classes in the ‘Sport’ year, so no reference to sport in Yr7 or other years is necessary. If sport was run in the body of the timetable, such as junior and senior sport being at separate times within normal timetabled periods, you may need to apply a sport class in each year as a place holder – solely to prevent teaching classes being assigned to these periods. No teacher or room or students would be assigned to these classes in this case. 

 It is worth noting that every single co-curricular activity should ideally be coded into your timetable, and not just sport. This would include Debating, Choir, Band,  Chess club, Zone athletics, and many others. Each of these individual classes should also be created in the file, though possibly in a Co-curricular year. 

 Staffing Sport classes 

 As previously detailed, you should use Teachers > Subject teachers to specify who can or cannot do sport, and/or who is the preferred teacher(s) to take certain sports.  

 Once individual sport classes are configured in Classes > Class data, you may use auto staffing, to automatically assign a sport class to all teachers listed as capable of taking one or alternatively use the Teachers > Staff allocations screen to manually drag and drop the sports classes to the teachers who have been identified in the Teachers > Subject teachers group for that sport. 

 In schools which have a different teaching load, depending on whether you take sport or not – you can set up an allowance for NoSport.  As an example, if your school has a  full-time teaching load of 42 periods including sport, this may equate to 38 teaching periods, and four sport periods. Teachers who do not take sport may be required to teach 39 or perhaps 40 periods, in recognition that teaching periods are more work than sport periods so are valued higher.  

 For each teacher that does not take sport, they should be given a NoSport allowance credit of one period, which ensures their teaching load is correctly calculated, and as such ‘NoSport’ teachers can be quickly identified in the file. Note that the ‘NoSport’ allowance is solely for managing the teaching load, and not as a way to exclude this teacher from actually being assigned a sport – as this is done by ensuring they are not listed as a qualified Subject teacher for sport in Teachers > Subject teachers. 

Simple Sport Staffing 

 If you do not wish to manage sport classes at the level of individual sport, you may wish to simply apply sport to each individual teachers loads, or have sport appear on their timetables. In this case, in the sport year, create a class: 

Code = Sport.01 (The reason we apply a leading zero on the class identifier 01  is just to simplify the format, given we assume your school will have more than 10 staff being assign sport. Thus, a two digit class identifier for sport classes is appropriate for neater sorting by sport class codes.)

Subject = Sport

 Fill in the other class data details as per individual sports classes, as above. 

 Now, press shift-F6 to access Class data (by subject). In the field  #Classes, enter the number of classes you require, being the number of teachers you wish to assign sport to. If unsure, just put a rough number such as 50, as you can easily modify this later. 

 Press F6, to view Class data. You will now see 50 individual sport classes have been created, and are ready to be assigned to staff. in some cases, you may need to tidy up sport classes, such as inserting the leading zero on the class identifier for the first nine classes, or making other minor adjustments adjustments. 

Manage Sport Choices - Ongoing 

 This is the E10 recommended best practice approach. It allows coordinators to manage lists, makes sport lists visible to all as part of the system, show assigned sports on students and teachers timetables and allows marking of Sport rolls very easily. 

 The E10  class list manager (Students > Class list manager) tool is very powerful. It can be used to easily manage the sport class lists, showing class size, gender balance, student social links and other aspects. Staff is specifically designed to outsource class list management to authorised teachers. Rather than do sport lists separately to E10 , they should always be done IN the application, using Staff, and by the Sport coordinator directly - or their authorised reps.  

You can assign a SEPARATE year level password for the Sport year in E10  Students> Student data > More > Password (Multi-user change) This can be different to the teaching year password(s) - which is generally one password for all years, or in some cases a separate junior / senior level password. But the Sport coordinator can be issued the Sport year level password, which allows them to only manage Sport classes, and NOT any teaching class lists.

 Because the Sport year has no students assigned to it directly, the class list manager shows ‘all’ students in the school. This is a special rule for administration years like Sport or RollCall, because otherwise the class list manager tool shows only students assigned to that year. If students are not assigned to sport initially, this will show a big list of ‘unassigned student’ which can be slightly difficult to manage, but once assigned - the list is very easy to manage on an ongoing basis. When a new student arrives at the school, you see a small handful of unassigned (new) students showing in class list manager.  You can simply assign these students manually to their designated sport choice. 

Other Approaches to Managing Sport 

Coding Sport Classes: Ignore Sport 

 This is acceptable, and simple, but NOT best practice. Some users do not have any Sport classes at all, but code the periods in the E10  grid as green, where they run whole school sport at these times. Students see the green period, and all know that Sport occurs here, and listing Sport as an actual ‘class’. Similarly teachers also know Sport occurs here, and just see the green periods, as opposed to a designated word ‘Sport’ on their timetables. 

 While very simple, and requires no ongoing changes with new enrollments, this does not manage variation in teaching loads for those who take sport (or not), and does not manage individual sport class lists for various activities. 

Coding Sport Classes: Make Sport Classes = Line S 

 This is not the best practice approach. Some schools code a Sport class in each year, or even a single Sport class in the Meeting year for the entire school. This can be coded as Line = ‘Line S’ for Sport. You may then assign all students to these classes using E10's  class list manager, to ensure they have Sport on their timetable. 

 Having only one Sport class simplifies the number of class codes in the admin system, which some users like. This is not the E10  recommended ‘best practice’ approach, as: 

•  It is not auto-populated. Users need to assign Sport to all new enrollments. While it can be done for all at one time, it needs to be done each time there are new students. 

•  It does not allow individual staffing as easily as registering ‘per float group’ sport classes, where there are more class codes set up, and ready to be assigned staff. You need to set up a Sport meeting and assign this to all staff who take sport, in order to show it on their timetables and in loads, so this approach moves the class codes from teaching years to the meeting year, but multiple codes are generally always required. 

Coding Sport Classes: Float With Core 

 This is ‘acceptable’ practice for schools which do not wish to manage individual sport class lists, and solely want to show sport as a broad category on timetables, and manage the staff loading for this activity. 

Rather than code Sport as ‘Line S’, you may code multiple Sport classes in each year, one for each float group (E.g. 7A, 7B etc). Because sport classes are associated with float groups, they auto-populate on any new enrollments. This is far more efficient, and this also provides a number of class codes which you can assign staff against to show Sport on their timetable, or manage which teachers take which year levels of Sport. 

 You can create additional class codes which are simply Lines = ‘Vertical 9Sport1’ if you need more teachers assigned to Sport in that year, than you have core classes listed, or you may elect to associate the Sport classes with PRAC float groups (E.g. Numbers instead of letters like 7-1 etc), as there are more prac class groups than core groups. 

While users traditionally consider float groups for classes that can ‘move’,  the structure here solely uses it for class list management purposes, being a tool to auto-populate these classes by float groups. Since Sport is often assigned fixed periods, you can enter this as a period requirement in F6 Class data, such as Periods = ‘Wed5-6’. Note the use of period ranges to simplify the entry, unlike the incorrect approach of: WedA5, WedA6, WedB5, WedB6.

 Generally it is easiest to NOT assign a room code for Sport, as this is obvious to participants, so it’s inclusion may be more visual noise on timetables than actually provide any real benefit. This is assuming Sport is whole school. Where Sport is Junior and Senior however, you may need to assign resources like the GYM or OVAL to Sport, in order to prevent their use by PE classes in the other half of the school on these periods.  

 Assign the Oval and Gym to the first two most senior Sport class (convention is junior classes inherit from seniors) as an example, you can vertically link all other Sport classes to the top class so they all SHOW Sport on the timetable, but the Oval is not being booked by each class individually - which would otherwise be a room clash. In F6 class data, the RoomPref field for all remaining Sport classes should show as ‘None’ as they share the Oval (or Gym etc), and do not all  require a separate ‘room’ individually. if you run whole school sport at the same time, it is generally simpler to not room it at all. If however, you run junior and senior sport at different times, you should ensure the gym and oval are being booked by these, to prevent junior PE classes being scheduled over   middle school sport times. 

Divide Sport into Junior and Senior Schools 

 Where you manage sport in two halves, you may find some confusion with the Sport year         class list manager showing ‘all students’, when you want to divide the cohort into two separate groups. There are two ways to address this need. 

Sport Umbrella Years (Divide Jnr/Snr Sport)

 You may create a ‘Junior Sport’ year as an umbrella year, by creating a year = Yr7+Yr8+Yr9 for example. By generating a WebChoice form for this ‘year’, you can create classes in this umbrella year, and will find ONLY the students in these years showing in Class list manager. This may seem effective, but is not best practice, as umbrella years are confusing and complex, and were designed primarily to manage cross year electives, than cross year class lists for administrative classes like Sport or Roll Call. 

Sport Extraction Classes (Divide Jnr/Snr Sport) 

 Rather than use umbrella years, you may have two Sport ‘lines’ in the Sport year, one for Junior school, and another for Senior school. Both these lines will initially be managing ‘all’ students. You then create a class in each of these two lines, being ‘Sport Junior’ (in one line) and ‘Sport Senior’ (in the other line). This is the best practice approach. 

 You may now assign all students in senior school to the senior sport ‘extraction’ class. This effectively assigns them to ‘something’ in one line, and thus they do not appear as unassigned in this line. You are now only managing junior students in the other line, without seeing large numbers of unassigned senior students here. 

Where Sport is segregated by junior and senior, you would need two separate lines - as Sport being ‘Line S’ would assign sport to only one double period per week, where you actually need Senior sport to be Line S on Tue5-6 (for example), and junior Sport to be Line J on Wed5-6 (for example). By assigning all junior students to the Sport Junior class in Line S, they are only free to be assigned an actual junior sport class in Line S. The reverse applies for senior students who are assigned Sport Senior in Line J, which also extracts them from this group, allowing effective management of the remainder, who are then assigned their ‘specific’ sport classes more easily.