abusTechnology, inc. is pleased to announce a significant update to its flagship abusSTAR product. This release includes a number of new tools and modifications intended to make usage more convenient than ever!
- Required Reported Term Grade Events
- Navigation
- Exempt from events
- Associate Effort Grade
- Improved Form Promotions
- Deletion Functionality
1: Required Reported Term Grade Events
A school has the ability of specifying Required Grade Events. These required events are the events which will appear on the grading reports, and should be created by teachers for each class they are grading. Grade events which are Optional may be created by teachers for tracking class achievement and progress, but do not appear on final reports.
The school administrator, using the Administrator Preferences Tool, is responsible for setting which events are Required for each term of the year (see Image 1).
The categories marked as required by the Administrator will now appear sorted by Required and Optional categories, in the Exam Type drop down list, when creating Grade Events in the Staff module using the Grade Events tool (see Image 2).
All required categories now appear on the Student Performance pages found in the Staff module under Remarks and Reports.
Please note that it is permissible to create multiple grade events of the same type as a teacher. Events of the same type, if they are also required, will be summed and averaged together to yield a final score for that event type.
All categories are all have three (3) letter abbreviations, used as the headings in reporting, as follows:
- Assessment: ASM
- Assignment: ASG
- End of Term : EOT
- Homework: HWK
- Midterm: MID
- Project: PRJ
- Quiz: QUZ
- Test: TST
- Year End: YED
2. Navigation
A much asked-for feature has been added in this revision: navigation from one student to another on the Remarks and Reports page, to be used when entering General Comments! A drop down list of the students and a Go button appears in the top right corner of the page when a search is performed by Form, Yeargroup and Status (the tool does not appear when students are found by specific searches). Similar navigation tools have also been added to the Conduct and Activity Remarks tools.
3. Exempt from events
Students can now be individually exempted from a Grade Event on a per event basis. Once exempted from the event, the event will not be included in the student average or class average for that event even if a mark is entered. The checkbox is found under the student name in Grade Class interfaces.
4. Associate Effort Grade
Effort grades can now be added to each grade mark for each student for campuses which track effort score as well as grade score. Effort grades are entered as scores of 1 to 100. To add effort tracking to a grade event, click Apply Effort Grade and update the grade event. Note: If effort grades are collected by activating this feature, do not uncheck Apply Effort Grade and save the grade event, or effort scores entered will be reset to 0 (grade scored entered will not be affected).
5. Improved Form Promotions
“Graduated” has been added as an option to the Select Form… list on the Form Promotion tool layouts.
When student form status is set as “Graduated,” and all forms promoted by the Administrator to close the school year out, each student’s Student Status History (as shown on the Student detail record pages) will be updated appropriately, with a Removal event also filed for graduating students. The internal status flag is also set as “Graduated” to allow the search tools to find students by their graduated status.
Students who are assigned to a form which is in the same Grade Level as their current form, for example, a student in Form 2.1 who will move to form 2.2 next year, will have their transcript also updated with a “Repeating” entry, and their Internal Status set as “Repeating.”
6. Deletion Functionality
The following tools has been updated with new deletion functionality:
i. Student Status History
ii. Calendar Events/Closures
These deletion capabilities are available to System Administrators only. Student Status History is intended to be part of a student’s permanent transcript, and removals should only be made after carefully verifying that an entry is in error.
Calendar event and closure entries will each appear with a “-” button to a System Administrator. If this is pressed, the entry will be deleted and may they be reentered to fix any mistake or error in the listing. Download Release Update
The abusSTAR team
If you have questions or encounter unexpected behavior. Please contact the abusTechnology offices at (246) 424-6106 ext 1007 or by email
Thanks for using abusSTAR!