Cohorts
All At a minimum all cohorts must be associated with a timetable structure and timetable term at a minimum. As as these define various characteristics around the cohorts timetabling.
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From there you have a couple of choices as to how the timetabling process will work for a specific cohort. These are largely defined by the checkbox called timetable managed externally. If this checkbox box is checked then it is assumed that an external platform such as EdVal daily Edval Daily will be interfacing with the platform and creating individual sessions in the school calendar as required.
If on the other hand this box is unchecked then Posi Ed PosiEd assumes the responsibility of creating and managing the timetable using the associated timetable structure and timetable term. This process can either be done through an external platform such as Edval which will provide Posi Ed PosiEd with a list of cohort schedules via its published timetable capability or cohort scheduled records can be created manually which is commonly the case for simple timetable structures e.g. primary schools.
Let's look more closely at these two structures from a technical point of view.
Timetable Managed Externally equals
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True
In this situation Posi Ed PosiEd is relinquishing control off of the process of creating individual classes in (sessions) in the calendar.
External timetabling platforms such as EdVal Edval Daily uilise utilise the LISS API to perform a publish daily data and publish daily delta timetable data to create and update session entries for each specific cohort that they manage. This means that the Posi Ed PosiEd generate calendar process is not utilised.
In many cases this will mean that there are no cohort schedule records visible for such cohorts, however daily uses users can still perform a publish timetable process which will create these cohort schedule records. In this case, Posi Ed PosiEd does not use these cohort schedule records to generate the timetable, however it does use them to display the students timetable component on the student account page. This is its only function in this situation.
Timetable Managed Externally equals
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False
In this mode the timetable of each cohort is defined through cohort session records. These can be either set up manually or created through your timetabling software. For example, by using the Edval 's publish timetable function.
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Here you can see a list of cohorts scheduled records at the top and below it is a list of sessions that have been created after the generate calendar process has been executed. We'll get to that section a bit later. But , but for now, we will focus on the cohort schedule creation.
Each cohort schedule record looks something like this:
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Cohort Schedules
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Bell Time
This is a link to the bell time in the timetable structure specified in the cohort. This bell time record will define a number of things including:
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The cohort schedule primary staff member and location is often used to calculate the default primary staff member and location off the cohort itself. The cohort schedule record that is used to define these defaults is picked at random as there is no other way to calculate reliably these values at the cohort level. The school should override these values at the cohort level if they are inaccurate.
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This field allows you to specify this particular cohort schedule is for a joint class. There are two types of joint classes supported by Posi EdPosiEd.
Vertical
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Classes
A vertical class means that two or more cohorts have been aligned such that students can interact between either of the cohorts. For example a year 11 and 12 arts art class might be aligned such that advanced Year 11 students might take part in the year 12 class and less advanced Year 12 students might remain with the year 11 class.
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A composite class is where two or more cohorts join together in a single class often with combined teaching staff and sometimes with multiple locations included. For example, two math classes might be combined in one on each Monday’s Monday class in a specific double classroom with both teachers present.
If either of these joint Session types are selected then the operator will need to also provide a reference to the master class. In these situations if two or more classes are taking part in either type of joint program, then any class can be allocated as the master class, and this class will assume certain priorities in the calendar generation and other processes.Recording 1696.wav