E10 - Elective data > Students

Modified on Thu, 14 Aug at 12:44 AM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preamble
Fields explained
View > Fields to show
Student Preferences
- Entering preferences manually
- Manually re-order preferences
Warning Colours

Preamble

Student preference data is collected and stored in a separate screen to the regular Student data. This is done so that the preference data collected can be retained permanently, as opposed to Students > Student data (F8) where class list details are updated during the schooling year.

Fields explained


Name	As appears in Students > Student data
Code	As appears in Students > Student data
WebCode	For schools using Edval Choice. WebCodes are generated the first time a form is sync'd to the Edval webservers. Each WebCode is individual to the student and is valid only for the academic year of the .etz file. Note that students are able to regenerate their WebCodes when they login, which will be updated in the .etz file after a Choice download occurs (Elective data > Students Action: Download student choices from Edval Choice*).
Year	As appears in Students > Student data
Letter	As appears in Students > Student data
Pathway	Entering a pathway value here means students ONLY see that pathway form when they log into Edval Choice. If left blank, the student can select from all available pathways when submitting online, and when downloading their Choices the pathway they selected will display.
Pref	Student's subject preferences. The bold line separates the main preferences from the reserves. The best result for a student is that all the selections to the left of this line are granted. If all students do not have to select the same number of units, there may be blank cells immediately to the left of the line. See section below on Student Preferences.
Pri	Priority indicates a student priority for Edval to consider when generating lines and granting students their preferences. Some schools might prioritise their top performers, or for schools using multi-year datasets, students in certain year levels may be prioritised over other year levels. Enter a numerical value eg. 1 or 2 or 10. The higher the number, the higher priority the student is given. The default is blank which represents 1. Negative priority numbers are used to de-prioritise students, eg if student may not be returning to the school, but their preferences must be included. eg. In a multi-year dataset, we might use Yr 12 = 6, Yr 11 = 4 Yr 10 = 2. Note: The Pri value is used by the line generation algorithm in determining the Student penalty scores (Lines > Line results > Student results > Score). The value used for Pri should not be too large, as the final Student scores just end up much higher.
UnitsR	Number of main units requested by the student, and indicates the number of units Edval will attempt to grant to the student. Students will be highlighted in Lines > Line results > Student results if assigned fewer units than requested.
Submit time	Only relevant to schools using Edval Choice. The date and time each student has last entered or modified their Edval Choice subject preferences. This field is populated on syncing the form (Lines > Elective data > Students > Action: Download student choices from Edval Choice). No entry here means they have not submitted any preferences online. TIP: Sorting this column easily highlights all students who have not yet submitted.
Insufficient	Students are highlighted if they have violated any rules and the group rule that has been violated display. Eg If a rule exists - Min 2 units of group E (English) - then any student who does not have a group E course listed in their preferences will appear with Insufficient = 'E'. Note that it is not possible for students to submit an insufficient course when using Edval Choice.

View > Fields to show

Further display options exist:

Subject codes: This is the default display and displays subject codes.

Subject names: Display subject names instead of codes.

Letter groups: The Letter group of the student as entered in Students > Student data.

Number groups: The Number group of the student as entered in Students > Student data.

Hide requests for cancelled courses: Cancelled courses are highlighted in a cyan colour, but sometimes we want to remove the cancelled courses from view. When courses are cancelled, Edval will try to place the student into the next course on their preference list to give them a full program (units).

Image 1: ROSS, Santa and ROSS, Martha have both selected 910VCD in the main preferences. The course is not running, so the course code is highlighted in cyan:

Image 2: Selecting 'Hide requests for cancelled courses' results in the reserve preferences for these two students to move to the left to appear in the main preference section.

Note that Course block and Show advanced features are used in the Courses screen and have no impact here.

Student Preferences

There are several ways that student preferences can be entered into the file:

Via Edval Choice (preferred)
Edval 10 Choice
Via Import from a spreadsheet
E10 - Elective data > Students: Import Elective preferences from a spreadsheet
Via Import from another .etz file
E10 - Import Elective data from another Edval .etz file
Entering manually (explained below)

Entering preferences manually

Course codes may be manually entered by typing the course code directly into a Pref cell.

Manually re-order preferences

Student preferences may be manually moved to the left or to the right using keyboard shortcuts.

Move Left (higher up the preference order: Click on the code that is to move, select Control and L on the keyboard

Move right (lower down the preference order: Click on the code that is to move, select Control and R on the keyboard

Whole columns can be moved in the same way, by clicking in the column heading then using the keyboard shortcut.

Note that schools using Edval Choice must close the form before manual changes to preferences can be made.

It may be wise to try this action in a copy of the file first, and once confident, make the changes to the live file.

Warning Colours

Problems with student's preferences are highlighted:

Pale cyan: the course is cancelled/not running (classes=0)
Apricot: the student has not requested a co-requisite course
Brown: the student has requested a forbidden course.
Pink: the student has broken the 'no more than' rule and requested too many of a group.
Note that the apricot, brown and pink violations are not possible when students submit their preferences in Edval Choice. Presumably manual entries have occurred.