(Short-term) Substitute Teacher Persona/Role

F Shane Johnson

Has anyone successfully created/cloned a persona and/or role for use by a short-term substitute teacher that would allow for limited access; i.e. take attendance and view class assignments?

With the recent influx of COVID, we've had more substitutes on campus and are trying to figure out a way to give them access to attendance and assignments, but limit their access otherwise.

Thanks, Shane

Geoffrey Goodfellow

Hi, @Franklin Shane Johnson . Yes, we “employ” our substitutes in Core so that they already have records with the Teacher role. Because they aren't scheduled anywhere like a normal teachers are, the substitutes don't see any “classes” or “groups” at the top file menu, but they do have access to search through all groups to find whatever classes they need to teach for the day. (We give them instructions on how to do this.) They only have view-only access to these materials, but they can see the lessons, the topics, the assignments, etc. (Even our normal teachers have view-only access to other classes.) For long-term substitutes, we actually schedule them as a co-teacher in the various classes so that they gain edit-access to the class and can also see it in the top menu.

Brian Gray

@Geoffrey Goodfellow - How do your short-term subs handle reporting absences? Based on your description, I think that they would have access to the class roster page, but not the attendance reporting. Is that correct?

Geoffrey Goodfellow

@Brian Gray , that is correct. For short-term subs, when they checkin to the office, they are given a copy of the teacher's schedule for the day, and they are also given the manual attendance sheets. There is a “Manual Attendance Sheet - By Teacher And Section” report where you can choose the teacher's name in a drop-down and choose the date, and the report consults the scheduling calendar to see what classes are scheduled that day, and then generates a fairly decent looking lined-roster of all the students in each section with boxes to check off each student as present or absent. They then submit these forms to the office.

We've talked about adding subs as co-teachers each day to give them access to take attendance within the LMS, but adding and removing co-teachers each day is laborious, and truthfully, many of our subs already have enough frustrations with technology and other systems they don't use routinely, so they often appreciate the paper!

F Shane Johnson

@Geoffrey Goodfellow, Thanks for your response. Are you able to share that set-up (selected roles) with me for us to accomplish as well?

Geoffrey Goodfellow

@Franklin Shane Johnson , when the substitute teacher is added to Core, on their core record, there is an “Employment" button that allows us to add that person to the “Teacher” role. This alone gives them view-only access to all our classes because we currently have the Teacher Role permissions set that way. I believe another option would be to clone the Teacher Role and name it Substitute, and then tweak the permissions of that new role the way you wanted, and then you could “employ” people to that role instead.

F Shane Johnson

@Geoffrey Goodfellow, Hi Geoffrey. This is great info! Are you able to share with me (sjohnson@ESAcadiana.com) how you give subs access and the instructions you give to subs to search through all groups to find whatever classes they need to teach for the day. I cloned the teacher role, named it substitute, with view only, but I am unable to have “all” groups populate or be available to search. Thanks, Shane

Geoffrey Goodfellow

@Franklin Shane Johnson To give subs read-only access to all of your classes, I believe you go to Core > Security > Group Page Access > Classes. Then for the given academic year and school level, you would “Add Access” and select your new Substitute role and then check the boxes to give them view access to Bulletin Board, Topics, Assignments, Roster, etc.

As for instructions for the subs, we used to have a more formal instruction handout which I cannot seem to locate at the moment, but the instructions were as follows: Have them switch to the Faculty Persona > Resources > Group Finder > View All > Browse Groups. Then switch group type to “Academics”. From there, they will see a listing of all classrooms and access whatever they need for the day.

Hope that helps!

F Shane Johnson

@Geoffrey Goodfellow

Thanks again, Geoffrey. This helps tremendously!

Shane