How do you handle students who take different sections of a course? Transcript duplication is a problem.

Lisa Sturgis

Hi all! We have recently moved to LMS/SIS from Education Edge and it's nearly time to generate a copy of our senior transcripts with their 20-21 classes included.


When a student is enrolled in different sections of the same course from fall to spring, it duplicates the class on the transcript. So, if a student moves from 3rd period Bio in the fall to 5th period Bio in the spring because of an elective they've chosen, Bio appears on the transcript twice. I am told that this is how the software was designed and that our consultant had never worked with another school who had students switch sections mid-year. We are a large school (1100+ in middle and upper) but we have hundreds of students that switch sections mid-year. Is this really that uncommon? Has anyone had any experience with this, and how did you work around the issue? 


Thanks in advance!

Lisa

 

Megan Morris

We also have tons of students switch sections between semesters.  Not sure if it's an option for you, but we just use the traditional (old) transcript builder - and those courses with section changes do NOT show up on separate lines in the old builder.


Feel free to reach out if you'd like a sample of our transcript!  megan.morris@lovett.org

Geoffrey Goodfellow

Like Megan, we also have many students that stay registered in a year-long course but are in different class sections each semester in order to increase the number of their course requests.  I believe the new schedule maker also will move sections between terms if it means more students will get the classes they want, so it an effective and desired functionality that is working well for us.  However, we are still using the old transcript builder because the new one treats two different sections of the same course as two different courses which is not correct.  We had this problem over a year ago but it is still not resolved in the new transcript builder.

Chris Felinski

The way we handle it is we have every single one of our classes, including year-long classes, treated as semester long classes.  So our Biology course, although a year long course where probably 3/4 of the students change periods between semesters, is a one semester long Biology-1 course in the fall and Biology-2 in the spring.  It then forces everything to be two separate courses, which is at least consistent.  We can then group courses on the transcript builder by semester to see all semesters grouped together, or go alphabetically to have to two semester classes side by side.  But they are different rows.  I know it doesn't fix your original issue, but this our workaround for consistency.

Kirsten Mayers

We also have a large number of upper school and middle school students switch sections between semesters.   We are also currently "stuck" using the old transcript builder until this is fixed.   We only display a Final Course Grade on the transcript - so we also have to manually calculate the final grade for all students that switch sections between semesters.   We were told by our consultant as well - that we were the first school they have ever heard of switching sections - LOL. 

Hannah Falchuk

I calculate grades for the quarter or the semester for the classes that students are enrolled in (and have gradebook grades for). ---- Academics > Grades > Grades Management > Enter grades by class


Once the student is enrolled in the new section, I enter the grades from the previous section's marking periods into their grade grid for the new section ---- Academics > Grades > Grades Management > Enter grades by student


Then, I drop the student from the previous section, either by managing the student's groups or on the page of the class in Scheduling > Requests and Schedules > Classes.


One line will show up on the transcript or report card, with whichever final or report card grade is set to show.

Oona McKnight

We also have students switch sections at the semester. I'm not sure why this worked in the old transcript builder but does not in the new one. In fact, Support has fixed this issue for "most" of the students but there are still a few who are showing on two separate lines (with full credit on both lines instead of half each), not sure why. Still stuck with the old builder, but I really like the new one better in many ways - ability to control the width of the columns, ability to add notes... so I would prefer to use the new one! This issue is frustrating.

Katherine Lewis

This issue has been under discussion for quite a while. There was a feature request asking for a fix: https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OR-I-2023. This one, however, has been merged with another feature request that doesn't seem related, but maybe from the backend it is: https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OR-I-1902. It says the fix it "under consideration". We have started to use the new transcript builder and for those who change sections it does print the classes on two separate lines which we hate, but there were enough other advantages that we decided to move ahead with it and keep our fingers crossed that this would be resolved soon.


It seems to be an issue with the "changed section" function. This is what support recommended for a workaround: If you do need to keep record of that grade, you would want to use the drop option and if you're okay with not having a grade recorded/no record of the course - then the Scheduling Error option. However, I do recommend using the drop option for now instead of the change sections just because you usually do want to keep a record of the course and grade and that's the only option we have that won't display 2 times on the transcript. I haven't been able to find a work around with using Change Sections.


That said, the system doesn't always print the different course sections on one line even when the recommendation above is followed. Can't wait for this to get fixed!!