As is the case with any glossary, the definitions provided represent the perspective of Enriching Students. These terms, and at times the associated application settings may be used differently from one school to another. These definitions are therefore meant to provide a baseline of understanding and application usage.
Active
Unlike a soft-delete, active / in-active is the status of a user. As such, this “flag” can be activated and deactivated at any time, unlike a “soft-delete” which requires Enriching Students support intervention.
An inactive user remains intact in the system, but is not available for use in or by the system. (e.g. an inactive student is not present in the schedule, and the courses of an inactive staffer is not listed in the schedule.)
This status also applies to the courses that are associated with a staffer. Both Advisory and the Subject Matter course can be deactivated. When this is done, they are no longer visible for scheduling.
Adjusted Course/Special Offering
Practically speaking, students are scheduled to staffers, not to courses. However, it is clear that staffers may offer support for varying subjects from time to time.
To support this, the course that a staffer offers can be adjusted, which could include being temporarily renamed, adjusted for seat count or even adjusted in type of appointment (e.g. Extra Help, Enrichment, Grade Recovery, etc.).
An example that makes this clear is the instance in which a math staffer decides to offer Chess lessons on a specific date during the flex period. The staffer is still a math staffer, and their subject matter course does not change, but there is a need to present what the staffer is “offering” during that specific flex period, and it needs to be clear in the course listing when creating an appointment. Additional reason for creating an adjusted course include changing the room location or room #.
Advisory
The period in the Enriching Students schedule dedicated to assisting students in matters related to enrichment. This contrasts with periods in which a staffer is focusing on a subject. While not required, when utilized, it typically appears at the beginning of the week, giving students and staffers the opportunity to tailor the upcoming week to meet the student's needs.
Appointment
A combination of a date and a period in which a student is scheduled to a staffer on a specific date. This may include details such as the course name and whether it can be changed by other staffers or the student.
Blocked Date
A staffer and their corresponding courses can be identified as unavailable for scheduling by marking their associated dates as blocked. Unlike changing the status of a staffer’s course (as done on the staffer’s profile page), a blocked date does not affect the course itself, but rather makes the staffer unavailable for scheduling for a day or days. A date can be blocked at the school level (e.g. a holiday or full school assembly), at the department level (e.g. all science staffers are away for training), or at the staff level (e.g. a specific staffer will be away).
Course
The primary subject to be addressed during date and period. The course offered by a staffer is typically based on the staffer’s primary subject in the SIS, however this can be adjusted by means of an adjusted course within Enriching Students. This then allows a teacher to indicate that appointments created to specific periods and dates will be for other subjects.
Departments
Courses or offerings are logically grouped under major categories. These categories are often related to the subjects that are captured in the school's SIS. However, a potential distinction in Enriching Students is that a teacher can exist in only one department. This is true even if a teacher provides flex courses that cross multiple subjects. For example, an Algebra teacher will likely be listed under the Math department in their SIS, and so would typically be associated with a Math department in Enriching Students. Even if the same teacher has a course related to Science and can assist students in this area, at any given point in time, the teacher can be associated with only one of these departments.
Final Attendance
At the time attendance is taken, there are the students who have been scheduled to the course, and those who are present, and the number of these can differ. After attendance has been taken, the number of those actually present for whom attendance was taken, is the final attendance.
Graduation Year
Using the phrase "the class of..." helps to define the graduation year. Doing so eliminates the misunderstanding that it is related to the school (e.g. when the student graduates from the middle school) rather than to the student. No matter where a student is in their primary school progression, the graduation year will refer to the year they graduate from High School.
Import
A means by which schools can enter or maintain their data in a en masse. This can include the automated processing of source information, whether in a third party repository such as Clever, or a .CSV file. Such automation is preformed nightly for staff, student and roster data, and approximately every 10 minutes for attendance data.
For .CSV files, the data is divided into three categories: staff, student and roster. The formats for each file type as well as other related import information can be found here.
Period
An calendar segment of undefined duration for which a student appointment can be made. Unlike an SIS schedule which is typically based on school periods that have predefined start and end time, the period within Enriching Students simply represents an appointment slot. There is no means for establishing the duration of the period, though this could be added to the period naming (e.g. Flex 1 [10:30-11:00], Flex 2 - After School)
Up to 20 periods can be activated and named, and once a period is activated, it will default to being available for each day of the week. To “remove” the period from the schedule, it needs to be blocked.
Periods can also be pre-booked. This is typically done in relation to periods that are defined as Advisory.
Pre-Book
This is the automated process whereby students are assigned to their Advisory teacher for a period(s). This requires that students be assigned an Advisory staffer and that the staffer’s Advisory course be active. When utilized, pre-booking creates appointments for the selected periods for the entire school year, from the point of activation forward. When the setting is deactivated, the automated creation of appointments for new students stops, but the appointments that were created remain.
Roster
A grouping of students. Rosters are created from data in the SIS based on the grouping of students according to their classes (courses). Additionally, custom rosters can be created within ES to group students for other purposes. Although roster names are based on, and therefore similar to course names, they are not directly related. A course name can be changed without affecting the roster name and inverse is true as well.
Seat Count (also Max Seat Count)
This is the total number of students that a course or room size is meant to accommodate. This number can be adjusted up by the staffer associated with the course (by creating an adjusted course), as well by an administrator, but it can only an administrator can lower the seat count.
While the count prevents staffers from surpassing an assigned number of students, when creating appointments by means of the schedule page, an admin can exceed this number when using the Mass Schedule feature.
Self-Scheduling
This is a permission that is granted to students when a school wants to allow students to create their own appointments. Based on the admin configuration settings, a student can schedule themselves when no appointment exists, when a student is scheduled to their advisory teacher, and when appointment has been specifically marked to allow for overwriting by the student.
Self-Scheduling Window
This is an interval of time in which students are allowed to self-schedule, ranging from one day to the entire school year. The self-scheduling window is based on the concept of a “rolling period of time”. For example, a school can decide that students should be able to schedule themselves for the current day and the next school day. This is a two day rolling window. There is no need to enter the system and update the available dates with each passing day, but rather, the system will automatically advance the days open for scheduling with each passing day.
SIS/SMS
School Information System/Student Management System. This is the application that manages the school data at an enterprise level. This is contrasted with Enriching Students, which imports some SIS/SMS data to facilitate the scheduling of students to teachers for differing purposes, including enrichment, advisory or flex.
Soft-Deleted
The state of a user (student or staffer) when they cannot be used in the system in their typical respective roles (e.g. cannot be scheduled or cannot create appointments), but their data still remains in the Enriching Students system until the end of the school year.
A soft-delete occurs when a staffer exists in Enriching Students, and an import of staff data is performed which does not include the user information. Enriching Students considers the user as having been deleted, so the user is marked as such, but the data still remains in Enriching Students, thus the “soft-delete”.
Only an import of user data can generate a soft-delete.
Staffer
An individual user who is not a student. This includes the roles of: teacher, admin, or substitute. An active staffer consumes a license, therefore, making a staffer inactive releases a license for use. A staffer cannot be deleted when they have completed appointments (i.e. appointments in the past for which attendance has been take) since their information may be needed for reporting purposes. Therefore, an existing staffer who does not appear in a staff import will be "soft-deleted" if closed appointments exist for the staffer.
Struggling Students
There are times when a school chooses to establish a grade threshold to be used for identifying students who are struggling in one or more of their courses. Once a student’s grades fall below this threshold they are considered struggling students. A student's grades, and whether they are struggling can be viewed on the student profile page.
Student
An individual for whom an appointment is created. Each student exists in only one school in that appointment schedules are not shared between schools that have accounts within Enriching Students. Therefore, even though a student can be scheduled to appointments in multiple schools, there is no logical link between these individual instances of the student. (e.g. schools could schedule the student to conflicting appointments)
Student Profile
Information related to students is divided into two categories: administrative and scholastic. Scholastic student information is found under the student profile page for each student. It is largely uneditable, and includes current grades, attendance data, with the student is "struggling" (if tracked), graduation year and homeroom or advisory details.
The administrative profile includes information such as the student's name, advisory staffer and graduation year,
User
Application users fall into four categories: administrator, staffer, substitute and student. While it is possible for a user to have overlapping roles (e.g. a staffer can have administrator rights), the roles themselves are distinct in that each has some points of differentiation.
- Administrator
- Can manage users and application settings. Also has the ability to decrease the seat count of teacher. Special scheduling options, such as Mass Scheduling, allow administrators for "override" settings while assigning students to courses.
- Teacher
- Can manage their own availability by means of blocked dates, and can override locks on appointments associated with their courses.
- Substitute
- Can take attendance for the course with which they are associated, and can schedule appointments. A user (identified by email address) cannot exist as a substitute and at the same time as a teacher or administrator in the same school.
- Student
- A user who is scheduled to courses. Unless granted by an administrator, students cannot create appointments.
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