Pros and Cons of Using a School for VLC Classes

Pros and Cons of Using a School for VLC Classes

Per Andrew:


Pros

  • Cleanliness. These are not classes that BHS teaches, so having them listed as classes that BHS teaches is wrong.
  • Course and section setup
    • Avoids requiring incorrect information for:
      • Teacher
      • Periods
      • Term
      • Room
  • Attendance
    • Avoids attendance getting entered/calculated for off-site classes
  • Counselors
    • Adding remote classes is easier than local, because it has a search by name
  • Scheduling
    • Easier to set up the Course Catalog
    • Easier to set up course selection screens
    • Easier to set up constraints
    • Simpler to make sure the right courses get assigned teachers and added to the schedule
  • Security
    • Fewer fake users needed to be placeholder teachers
    • Any fake users that are needed can have less access/access to fewer students

Not pro or con

  • Grading
    • We don't want these classes to be part of Store Grades at all, because no one is entering grades into the gradebook; instead, they're entered directly in Historical Grades. The Sections can be set up as "Exclude From Storing Final Grades", which will be the same in either case.
  • Quick Lookup/Counselor Dashboard
    • Some slight differences, but it works well either way

Cons

  • Schedules (bell/matrix) are not clear that the student is also taking off-site classes
  • Need an additional start of year/end of year process for the additional school
    • This is minor since there are no students enrolled at the school

Unknown

  • State reporting
    • For some submissions, it's not 100% clear how they're supposed to deal with external courses
      • 12_Course
      • 13_CourseSection
      • 14a_StuSectionEnrollment
      • 14b_StaffSectionAssignment
      • 15_StudentSecResults
    Which external courses do these include, and how are we supposed to report information we don't control (like the the staff teaching a course)
  • State Plugin
    • Unknown if this will work better, worse, or the same


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