Teacher Management

In Accelerus, anyone who needs to login and is involved in entering, maintaining and administering student assessment or reporting information, needs to be added as a teacher to the database. This means that even if the Accelerus administrator is not an actual teacher at the school, they must be in the Accelerus database as a teacher.

Teachers are assigned roles in Accelerus - school, subject, class or cohort, or a combination of these. These roles determine the data to which teachers have access, ie which classes, subjects and/or cohort groups they have been assigned. The permissions applied to these roles determine also the extent of that access, eg view only compared to having authority to add or delete data.

All teachers login to Accelerus using the teacher code assigned to them and a password, which then allows them to access data applicable and available to them.

Teacher records apply across the database perpetually, ie there is only one record per teacher for all years of the database. However, each cycle the teacher record is assigned to different classes, subjects and cohorts, as appropriate. Therefore, if you open a teacher's record in one academic cycle it will display the classes, subjects and cohort roles for that cycle, but a different set if opened in another cycle.

Because the base teacher data - their name, gender, title and start and end dates - applies across all years, if you change a teacher's name, it will appear as changed even if you display previous years' data.

Ent TeacherWindowNumbers

The general features of a teacher's window are described in the table below.

Feature

Each teacher record opens in its own tabbed window, with the tab and title bar displaying the teacher's code and name. These details will appear whenever you open a particular teacher's record, but the academic cycles in the right corner of the title bar indicate the timespan of the various roles in the window, eg the classes the teacher is or was teaching.

The Teacher Details button allows you to hide the teacher's detail fields, found in the top half of the window, thereby allowing more space for the various tables below. Reclicking the button will redisplay the fields.

Of the fields in the teacher window, identifying the teacher:

•	Teacher Code is a mandatory field, which is used as the teacher's user name to login to Accelerus. It will usually reflect the coding system used by your school in its administration or timetable systems.

•	The teacher's family name and given name are mandatory, but the preferred name is optional. In most cases, the given and preferred name are the same.

•	The teacher's title field is optional but if used, holds titles such as Mr, Ms, Dr, etc. This field should be left blank if your school does not include it with the teacher's name on student reports.

•	The teacher's gender may be selected from the dropdown list, but may also be left blank.

Teachers may be assigned a start date, ie the date at which they commenced at the school. Also, an end date may be added when they leave the school.

These dates may be entered in any valid date format or selected by clicking the calendar icon. They are used in determining whether a teacher is considered current or not and whether they appear in the Teacher Explorer or Quick Find by default. However, these date fields may remain blank.

Ent TeacherDomainUserName The teacher's password field is only used where a teacher has forgotten their password.

When a new teacher is added, the teacher code is automatically assigned as the password and it is up to the teacher to change their password the first time they login to Accelerus. An important aspect to note is that the user name and password are case sensitive.

However, login settings available in the School Settings window allow the use of the school network's Active Directory login credentials, instead of or as well as the Accelerus user name and password. Where this feature has been activated, the teacher records will display another field - Domain User Name.

The following tabs will appear in each teacher window:

•	The Class Roles tab displays all of the classes where the teacher has been assigned a class role, eg Teacher, actual teacher of the class, or shares a teacher role.

•	The Subject Roles tab displays all of the subjects where the teacher has been assigned a subject role, eg is the coordinator of a particular subject.

•

Cohort tabs will only appear if the school has defined cohort types in the School Settings window, and the number of tabs and their names will reflect the cohorts set up. Most often, as shown above, there will be a Year Level and a Home Group cohort, however called at the school, each with its own role tab. Each tab will display the appropriate cohort over which the teacher has responsibility, eg is the home group teacher or year level coordinator.

The teacher record's toolbar contains icons that are applicable to the tab currently selected. For example, when a class is highlighted in the Class Roles tab, the class details window may be opened or the results for the students in the class.

The standard Delete and Reinstate icons found throughout Accelerus allow, in this case, teachers to be removed from roles, or reinstated where they have been marked for removal but the teacher record has not yet been saved.

Some aspects of teacher records in Accelerus to note include:

•	Teacher records may be added individually manually, or may be imported in bulk using comma-separated value files, ie CSV files.

•	Teacher records are the first records that need to be set up in Accelerus as they must be available to assign to cohort, subject and class roles, in addition to school level roles if applicable.

•	The Teacher Explorer is used to view and open teacher records and, if appropriate, delete teacher records.

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Accelerus requires each user to login, whether into the database or an offline file. Teacher passwords are an important part of the maintenance of teacher records. Either the Accelerus teacher code and password are used to login by all users of Accelerus or a school may link the Accelerus logins to teachers' Windows logins. Therefore, in this latter case, teachers do not have to use or remember an additional user name and password for Accelerus.

•

The standard icons and methods for deleting records from tables in Accelerus may be used in each of the roles tabs of the teacher record in order to remove teachers from a role. However, you may not add a teacher to a role via the teacher window. Instead, you need to open the appropriate class, subject or cohort and assign the teacher in there.

Teacher records apply across the database perpetually. Therefore, you do not delete teachers when they leave the school. Usually, however, one does not want teachers who have left to keep appearing in windows and listings. Therefore, teachers are considered current or not current, and only those who are current are displayed in the various Accelerus windows and processes.

Every teacher record contains start and end date fields which determine when a teacher is considered current or not.

A teacher is not current in the academic cycles selected if:

•	The teacher's start date falls after the academic cycle end dates.

•	The academic cycle starts after the teacher's end date.

For example, the teacher below, with an end date of 31 December 2011, is current in Sem1, 2011, but will not be current when the 2012 academic cycle starting on 1 January 2012 is being viewed. She would also be non-current if viewing cycles prior to 2010, ie cycles that end before her start date.

Ent TeacherDates

A teacher who is not current does not appear in Quick Find, the Teacher Explorer and various teacher listings, for the currently selected cycles.

It is not mandatory to enter start and end dates. However, if an end date is not entered for a teacher, when they leave, even though they may not have been assigned further classes or any other roles, they will still appear in the various windows and listings.

Although teachers who are not current do not appear, by default, in the Teacher Explorer or Quick Find, there may be times when you need to bring up a non-current teacher. Two situations where this is likely to occur are:

•	A teacher who left the school has returned and their teacher record needs to be reactivated.

In this case, the teacher's record needs to be opened and their end date removed.

•	A new teacher has come to the school and the same teacher code has been assigned to the new teacher in the school administration system as that used for a teacher who is not current.

It is preferable to keep the teacher codes in Accelerus in line with those being used in other school systems. Therefore, the old teacher record needs to be opened and the code changed so that it is then available to be assigned to the new teacher.

It is recommended that a systematic approach to the recoding of teachers who have left is taken, eg add a particular suffix to their code, eg SMIJ_OLD, SMIJ_X, etc.

Both of these situations may be remedied as follows:

•	Go to Tools > School Settings.

•	Click the System Items tab.

•	In the System Defaults section, tick the Show non current students and teachers checkbox.

Ent TeacherShowNonCurrentSetting

•	Save the School Settings window.

•	Open the Teacher Explorer and find the non current teacher's record.

•	Open the record and make the changes required, eg delete the end date or change the teacher's code.

•	Go back to the School Settings window and deselect the Show non current students and teachers checkbox.

Because teachers are in the database perpetually and only have one base record for all this time, there are day to day issues of which Accelerus administrators should be aware.

•	Duplicate teacher codes

If a teacher leaves, they may be non-current, but their record still remains in the database even years later. Therefore, there is the potential that the teacher code assigned to them will clash with one being assigned to a new teacher. When you try to save a new teacher record where the code is already in use, you will receive a message such as this:

Ent TeacherDuplicateCode

The message informs you of the start and end date of the previous teacher so that you may go back to the appropriate cycles in the database and change the code of the previous teacher, allowing you to assign it to the new teacher.

Alternatively, you may choose to display non-current teachers in the Explorers so that you can find and change the record in the current academic cycles.

•	Previous years' data affected

When you change a teacher's record, eg their name, it affects all previous years' data. For example, if you were to print a report out from a previous year, it will have the teacher's new name on it and not the name they had at the time.

For most schools this is not an issue. Hard copies of the old reports are usually kept, on the one hand. Also, the teacher's new name does not change the fact that it was the same person who wrote the report.

If this is of concern to the school, another teacher record will need to be added for the teacher, using the new name. An end date needs to be added to the old record and all of the teacher's classes, subjects and cohort groups will need to be reassigned to the new teacher record.

•	New code with new name, but same password

If a teacher changes their family name, it is likely that their code will need to change also as, typically, teacher codes are based on the teacher's family name. It can be too confusing to have the family name out of step with the coding system used at the school.

You may change the teacher's code in Accelerus, in the same way as you would change any other fields for the teacher, in order to keep it consistent. No data will be lost and all records in the database will be changed internally so that they are referring to the new teacher code.

If you change a teacher's code in Accelerus, this does not automatically change the teacher's password. This will remain set to whatever it was prior to the change of the name. The automatic assigning of the password based on the teacher's code only occurs when a teacher is first added to the database or when the database is first converted from MarkBook to Accelerus.

By default, the login system in Accelerus expects the teacher's code, as set up in the Accelerus database, to be their user name.

When a teacher is added to the Accelerus database or when a database has been converted from MarkBook, their Accelerus password, is set to their teacher code by default.

However, login settings found in the System Items tab of the School Settings window allow schools using Microsoft Active Directory to link Accelerus logins with teachers' Windows logins. Therefore, teachers do not have to use or remember an additional user name and password for Accelerus. Instead, their school Windows login is used to verify their identity.

When a school has activated Active Directory Integration in the School Settings window, an additional field appears in every teacher's window - Domain User Name - as seen below.

In order for teachers to be able to login to Accelerus using their Active Directory credentials, all teacher records must contain the teacher's domain user name.

This must be the full domain user name, eg SchoolDomain\jemm, as shown below.

Teachers' domain user names may be added manually to teacher records, or may be imported via a teacher CSV file.

If being imported, a column headed Domain User Name needs to be inserted in the CSV file, and the user name for each teacher entered in that column.

It is not necessary to reimport all teachers' details if your teachers are already in the Accelerus database and wish to move to Active Directory integration. You may import a CSV file to update the teacher records with their domain user name in bulk. All it requires is a column for the Teacher Code and the Domain User Name.

Ent TeacherDomainUserName

If teachers already have their offline files and the school moves to the Active Directory login approach, teachers may not use their school login credentials until they have synchronised their offline files. Until then, teachers will still use their current Accelerus teacher code and password.

Teachers may be assigned to school, subject, class or cohort roles that have been defined in the Security window.

Adding a school role to a teacher is undertaken directly in the School Roles tab of the Security window.

In the case of subject, class and cohort roles, teachers may be assigned these via the relevant record, eg assign a class teacher via the class record. Also, role assignments may be imported using a CSV file of these entities, with teachers assignments therein. The subjects, classes and cohorts to which a teacher has been assigned may then be viewed directly from the teacher's record.

Each teacher's record contains a tab for class and subject roles, and one for each cohort type that has been set up at the school, eg Year Level, Home Group.

Within each tab, a table details each of the records and the role held by the teacher.

The standard Accelerus procedures for tabs and tables apply in each of these, eg each row may be double clicked to open it, a context menu is available, showing available options, and so forth.

Ent TeacherClassTab

Teachers are not assigned their roles via the teacher's record. Instead, to manually assign a teacher to a class, subject or cohort, you need to bring up the records for the classes, subjects and cohorts of the teacher.

Usually teachers are assigned to their roles using CSV files, but when a new teacher arrives or teachers are reassigned classes mid-cycle, it may be easier to update the database manually.

•	Go to Quick Find or the appropriate Explorer, find and open the records you require, eg from the Class Explorer find and open all of the classes that the teacher is to teach.

•	In each record's role field that the teacher is to be assigned, eg a class teacher role:

➢	Click the dropdown arrow and select the teacher required.

➢	Begin typing part of the teacher's name, to find teacher records with matching text, and select the one required.

Ent TeacherChangeTeacher

•	Save and close the record.

•	Repeat these steps for each class, subject and cohort group the teacher is to take.

Generally, teachers are added to their classes, subjects and cohort groups via CSV files which are imported into the Accelerus database.

In the CSV files for classes, subjects and cohorts, fields or columns are added for each role that has been defined for each entity type.

For example, as shown here, the CSV file of class records contains two role columns - TCH1 and TCH2. In each row, which is one class record, the appropriate teachers are added under the TCH1 and TCH2 columns. Some classes have one teacher only, whereas others have two.

Ent TeacherCSVRoles

The header row in the CSV file must contain the correct code or name that was assigned to each role in the Security window. In this case, either TCH1 or Teacher 1 could have been entered as the headers for the two role columns. Anything other than these would result in error messages that the header is invalid when the CSV file is attempted to be imported.

Ent TeacherClassRoles

The Welcome Screen displays the roles that a teacher has been assigned, and the records for each role:

•	When in an offline file, only the class roles and the classes for each of these are displayed.

•	When logged into the database, all of a teacher's roles are displayed.

In the Welcome Screen below, where Kathleen Edwards is working directly in the database, all her roles are listed. She:

•	Has a school role of Administrator.

•	Is Teacher 1 for three classes - as shown in the tooltip for the Teacher 1 role.

•	Has a subject level role of Subject Coordinator for two subjects.

Ent TeacherWelcomeRoles

Instead of deleting a teacher when they leave the school, you should make them inactive so that they no longer have access to classes, subjects, results, etc, for the current and any future academic cycles.

•	If the school uses offline files, make sure that the teacher has synchronised their offline file so that any results they have entered are updated into the Accelerus database.

•	Use Quick Find or the Teacher Explorer to find and open the particular teacher's record.

•	In the End date field, enter the end date for the teacher in any valid date format or select the date by clicking the calendar icon.

•	If the teacher is leaving mid-cycle:

➢	In the Class Roles tab, for each class displayed that needs to be assigned to another teacher:

®	Double click the row to open the class record.

Ent TeacherInactive

®	In the class record's role field that contains the teacher's name, select the replacement teacher.

Ent TeacherChangeTeacher

®	Save and close the class record, and the class will be removed from the teacher's Class Roles tab.

➢	Repeat these steps for the subjects and cohorts appearing in the Subject Roles and each Cohort role tab for the teacher.

•	Save and close the teacher's record.

•	If the teacher had a school role:

➢	Go to Tools > Security and click the School Roles tab.

➢	Click each school role and check the list of teachers assigned to these.

➢	If the teacher appears for a particular role:

®	In the pane on the right, click the row of the teacher to be deleted.

®	Click the Delete teacher assignment icon at the bottom of the right pane, which will mark the row for deletion.

Ent TeacherDeleteSchoolRole

➢	Save the change by clicking the Save icon or pressing Ctrl S.