The Quick Setup Window

The Quick Setup window is where schools in the Victorian Government and Catholic sectors set out their requirements for their AusVELS semester reports and generate all of the subject and report parameters for these reports.

The Quick Setup window is where all of the VELS report parameters are selected and generated

It is made up of several sections and features:

When you create a new Quick Setup instance, you must first enter the following mandatory data in the Details section of the Quick Setup window:

•	Assign a unique name to the Quick Setup instance, eg 2013 Secondary Semester 1.

•	Select the report run to which the Quick Setup instance belongs, keeping in mind the connection between Quick Setup and report runs.

The template folder nominated for that report run applies automatically to the Quick Setup instance.

•	Select the Quick Setup structure that applies, from the dropdown list of structures that are available in the database, which must have already been imported into the database.

•	Nominate whether the Quick Setup instance belongs to semester 1 or 2.

•	If using RTF files, nominate where the RTF files reside. Otherwise, leave this field blank.

Note that Semaphore Consulting conducts special training courses on using RTF files to customise your AusVELS templates.

The mandatory fields in the Details section must be entered before you may save a Quick Setup instance

Once these details have been entered, a school must enter the number of the semester to which the Quick Setup instance applies and, optionally, their preferred parameter settings.

The Parameters tab in the Quick Setup window allows a range of customisations or parameters to be set up by each school, for the particular report Quick Setup instance.

All but one of the parameters apply to all structures, whether Catholic or Government. However, one applies to Government structures only, whereby Government schools may choose between a 4 or 5 point scale for work habits.

The Parameters tab shown here applies to Government structures.

QS Parameters

Default parameters will appear in the various fields and these may be accepted or changed, as required, prior to building the subject report parameters in the Quick Setup window.

The different types of parameters and an explanation of these may be found below:

Semester

The Semester parameter is a mandatory parameter for all schools, determining whether the Quick Setup instance applies to semester 1 or semester 2.

You cannot save the Quick Setup instance until this parameter is set and, once set, it may not be changed for the Quick Setup instance.

This parameter gives all schools the option of making the prior scores of students visible for all assessed domains/strands. Where Y is entered in this parameter, additional prior score assessment items will be created for the semester and these will contain any prior scores that exist for the student, that have been imported via the Student Details XML file. In this way, teachers may see the prior scores of students as they are assigning their scores for the current semester.

An N in this field, which is the default value, will only create prior score assessment items where the subject of the class is nominated as a full page subject in the Quick Setup window.

When using Quick Setup for AusVELS reports, by leaving the N default on this parameter, the assessment items that store the domain/strand dot graphics are created only:

•	For full page subjects, but are assigned a restricted status by default, ie hidden from teachers., although Accelerus administrators can choose to make them available for teachers to view when they are assessing their students.

•	In special system subjects, not available to teachers and used for producing the summary page of all of a student’s domains/strand results.

However, if the Show graphics and prior scores to teachers parameter is set to Y, the graphic assessment items are created for all types of reports, even if the graphic is not to print on the report, and these are made visible by default.

In addition, in order to be able to display the graphic, prior scores must be available in teachers’ classes. Therefore, columns for prior scores will also be created and visible.

In the example below, the Geography subject has been set up as a Part page subject, which means the report will not display a domain/strand graphic, despite the dimensions of The Humanities – Geography being assessed. However, teachers can see the graphic and a column for the student’s prior score in this domain while they are assessing their students.

QS ShowGraphic

An Additional comment field is available for inclusion in Primary Summary reports and all full page reports and schools may choose to include this in reports. The Additional comment name parameter allows the user to nominate the description of this field, or leave the default of General comment. This is the heading that will then be inserted into the report template when this field is selected.

An example usage of this field is to combine the achievement and improvements comments into one. Rather than generate two comments, just the additional comment may be selected, with an appropriate name, eg Achievements and Areas for improvement.

Various comment fields may be included in different types of AusVELS reports and schools may want to set different limits on the number of characters for these, eg a longer comment for What {Name} has achieved compared to the comment The school will do the following …

Each of these comment parameters will initially contain a default value:

•	2000 characters for Primary structures

•	1000 characters for Secondary structures

•	Set characters limits as specified by the Ballarat CEO, for the Ballarat Primary structure.

These defaults may be left or changed, with a number between 1 and 99,999 able to be entered as the character maximum for each different comment.

Comment marking schemes will be created for each of the specified comment lengths, where an appropriate comment marking scheme does not already exist.

These marking schemes will be coded AVCOM#, where # is the maximum number of characters, eg AVCOM750, AVCOM1000, etc.

The comment lengths are only assigned to comment items when the Quick Setup instance first creates the comment item for the particular subject. Should you change a comment parameter and then rebuild, any comment items already generated from the Quick Setup window will not be changed.

Government structures contain this additional parameter, allowing schools to choose between a four point or five point scale for the assessment of work habits.

The four point scale values are Excellent, Very Good, Acceptable, Needs Attention.

The five point scale includes a Good value between the Very Good and Acceptable values.

Although a 4 point scale is the DEECD requirement, many schools have been using a 5 point scale and having to go to some lengths to do so.

Up to eight work habits may be specified, so that each schools may enter a different number of and name for work habits to appear on reports each Quick Setup instance, ie every semester, if they wish.

When a new Quick Setup instance is created, the first two of these will be assigned default values of Effort and Behaviour, and the remaining six will display text Work Habit 3, Work Habit 4, etc. These may be changed as required.

The text entered in the Parameters tab for each work habit will then appear for selection in the Features tab, in each of the appropriate Text Boxes areas, as shown below, in the case of Secondary Full-page Subject Fields.

Once work habits have been generated in the Quick Setup window, changes to the work habit parameters will not affect already built work habits which will retain their original descriptions.

QS WorkHabits

The Feature tab of the Quick Setup window contains a series of trees which may be expanded and contracted by clicking the + or – beside each to reveal the branches and fields within:

•	A Curriculum Areas section made up of:

➢	AusVELS Domains and Strands.

➢	VELS Domains and Dimensions.

Each of these contain branches for each domain. Within each domain, the appropriate strands/dimensions are displayed.

QS CurriculumAreas

•	An English as an Additional Language tree, which will contain the EAL stages – A, B or S – applicable to the particular Quick Setup structure.

•	A group of Standard Primary Text Boxes or Standard Secondary Text Boxes, applicable to the structure. For example, the Primary and Secondary Catholic structures contain Religious Education fields.

From within the Text Boxes sections, the different non-domain type assessments and special text fields can be selected.

•	A set of short-cuts to allow the different levels of the trees to be revealed and hidden – the buttons – 1, 2, 3 and 4 – at the top of the Feature column.

•	In the case of the current Catholic Primary and Secondary structures, an additional feature section appears above the Curriculum Areas section – Overview Text Boxes – as shown above, with these varying for Primary and Secondary Catholic structures.

In each Quick Setup instance you decide on and add the subjects to be reported upon using AusVELS.

Clicking the Add subjects icon in the bottom left of the Quick Setup window brings up a subject selection window from which you can choose the subjects applicable to the particular instance.

Click the Add subjects icon in the Quick Setup window to bring up a subject selection window

The selection window allows you to select any subjects that belong to academic cycles that fall within the date range of the report run associated with the particular Quick Setup instance. For example, you may have annual, semester and term-length subjects and need all to be reported on using AusVELS.

All of the standard selection procedures that apply to Explorer windows may be used to make your subject selections.

Be careful when selecting your subjects, especially where you have semester subjects, that you only include those that are to be reported on using AusVELS in the particular semester you are working on.

A column will appear in the Quick Setup window for each subject selected.

If you hover your mouse pointer over a subject column’s heading, details of the subject - its name, level and academic cycle - are displayed.

Hover over a subject column header to display the details of the subject

In the header row, below the code of each subject added to the Quick Setup instance, there is a report type dropdown box from which you select the type of report that each subject is to have for that semester's reports.

Each subject added to a Quick Setup instance must have a report type

The number of available types will differ, depending on the structure applicable to the Quick Setup instance.

Note that when subjects are added to a Quick Setup instance, Primary level subjects are added as type Non and Secondary subjects as Full by default.

The available options are:

Type	Usage
Sum	Summary reports, where the assessments for the subject will be on a Summary page, displaying a Domain summary graphical table. This is the most common selection for Primary schools.
Full	The subject is to be reported on a full or separate page, the most common selection for Secondary schools.
Part	The subject is to be reported only as part of a composite page, with just a comment box for each subject.This is most likely to be used by Primary schools for specialist teachers.
EAL	Allows schools to produce a special type of full-page report for students for whom English is an additional language. This report differs for stages A, B and S.
LOTE	Only available in the case of Catholic Primary structures, allows the production of a special report for Languages other than English.
PLG	Stands for Personal Learning Goals, a special full-page report in which only stipulated text boxes may appear.
Non	Non reported subjects, ie where a subject is not being reported upon separately in either a full or part-page report, but the assessment of dimensions is still being undertaken in the subject. For example, the Library teacher may be assessing a student on the various dimensions of the Communication and Personal Learning domains, but the assessments will not appear on a Library subject report. Any domain assessments for non reported subjects will simply feed into the aggregated domain/dimension scores in the summary report.
RE	Only appears as a report type option in Catholic structures, with a different Religious Education report being produced for Primary and Secondary schools.