If you are concerned about the loss of your NASIS data in the event of a natural disaster or as a result of human error, then rest assured. All of the NASIS databases are backed up nightly. For added security the backups are also compressed, encrypted, cataloged with a randomized naming convention, and stored in a remote location. Please note, your school is still strongly encouraged to keep any supporting physical documents on file.
In the event that your school needs access to one of your backups, it is important to contact the Campus NASIS Support team immediately with the last known date when your database contained the information you need restored. This will enable Campus to respond to your request in timely manner and begin the rather intensive process of locating your backup, extracting and decrypting the data, and restoring it from our remote location.
Often there is a need to restore specific isolated data, which means that SQL scripts will need to be run to copy data across from your back up to your production database. Because the entire recovery process is quite complex in terms of the number of steps and people that need to be involved, there is a fee associated with restoring data that has been lost as a result of human error.
Since the fee is specific to the time it takes to recover and restore data, the sooner a school notices that there is missing data and submits a request for it to be restored, the easier it will be for Infinite Campus to fulfill their request, and thus the smaller the fee. If only a handful of records were affected, a school may want to consider manually restoring the data, as opposed to creating a purchase order request to have the data restored from a backup.
The Campus NASIS Support team would be happy to answer any questions you may have regarding the NASIS backup and restore process.
Are You Ready?
Setting up a FACE Calendar
The BIA/BIE initiated Family and Child Education (FACE), an integrated model for an American Indian early childhood/parental involvement program. FACE primarily serves families with children from prenatal to five (5) years of age by providing early childhood education, adult education and parenting services.
The BIE wants schools that are involved in this program to create a separate calendar for their FACE program.
Creating a FACE calendar is similar to creating a regular calendar. First, create a blank calendar and complete the items in the Calendar tab set; Calendar, Grade Levels, Terms, Period Schedules and Days. It is suggested that you use a full year term and an AM/PM period schedule.
The grade levels F1, F2 and F3 should be used specifically for the FACE program. If students are in the regular academic calendar, as well as receiving services in a FACE program, they will need an enrollment in each calendar using the appropriate grade levels associated with those calendars. Once a student is no longer receiving FACE program services an enrollment in the FACE calendar is no longer necessary. However, the student will still have an active enrollment in your regular academic calendar.
Please follow this link to view a Power Point presentation from the BIE on this topic:
If you would like assistance creating a FACE calendar, please have an authorized support contact call NASIS support at 1-800-605-7570.
Helping You Help Yourself
Transportation Tab
The Transportation tab lists the bus number, bus in and bus out times, and bus stops for a student. A student’s personal vehicle information can also be entered on this tab.
To use the Transportation tab, the NASIS Administrator needs to set up the bus detail information under System Administration>Transportation. In this example, the bus number and bus driver’s name are entered in the number and description fields. Choose a number and description method that is meaningful for your school.
Once the bus numbers and descriptions are defined they can be set on the student’s Transportation tab. Other pertinent data can be entered here such as the bus in and bus out times and bus stop information. Late buses can be defined as well as miles transported.
An individual student’s vehicle information can also be entered in the Parking Detail area. Available fields include the make, model, color, plate number and parking permit number.
What is especially helpful is that the Transportation fields are available in ad hoc reporting. You will be able to get a listing of students and their bus or parking information at any time.
The flexibility of being able to add custom fields to this tab is also a plus. There may be transportation information that you want to track that is not on this tab. Say, for example, the school needs to know if a guardian will meet the student at the bus stop. To set this up, go to System Administration>Custom>Custom Attribute. On the Custom Attribute Detail screen, click New. Fill in the Display Name, Object (which is the Transportation tab) Field Name and Data Type. In this case, the data type will be a checkbox.
When you return to the student’s Transportation tab, you can now see the custom field that was added. You will also be able to use this custom field in Ad Hoc Reporting.
Best Practice Composite Grading for Administrators
Composite grading is forming a grade for a grading task by combining two or more other grading tasks. For example, a semester grade can be the result of two quarter grades, or of two quarter grades and a semester exam. There are two ways that composite grading can be used in your system. The first is composite grading for administrators. This type of composite grading is set up at the course level and composite grading is the same for all sections of the course. The second way of using composite grading is at the section level where teachers can set up composite grading in the Instruction module for individual course sections. For the purposes of this article, we will be reviewing on how to set up composite grading for administrators.
Grading tasks are an integral part of any traditional grading setup in NASIS, and can be set up in Grading & Standards > Grading Tasks. Grading tasks can then be attached to a course by searching for a course, then going to the Grading Tasks tab.
For composite grading, a grading task should be established that will become the sum of two or more other grading tasks. As shown in the picture above, we are using the Quarter and Semester Grading Tasks. This course is a year-long course that gets a semester grade posted to the transcript for each of the Semesters 1st & 2nd. For our example here, we are going to make Quarters 1 and 2 each 50% of the Semester 1 Grading task (Q2) and Quarters 3 & 4 each 50% of the Semester 2 Grading Task (Q4).
Composite grading requires that all grading tasks are assigned a score group that has minimum percents defined. Score groups can be edited in Grading & Standards > Score Groups and Rubrics. See the picture below to view the sample score group that we have attached to our Quarter and Semester Grading Tasks on the course.
Once grading tasks and their score groups are set up, go to the course's Composite Grading tab.
To make a grading task a composite, select it from the list. The Composite Grading Detail box will appear. Enter a percent in the weight box next to the grading tasks that should contribute to the composite task. For this example, an equal weight of 50% for each quarter has been assigned to form the final semester grade. In the Composite Grading Detail editor box, there is a checkbox named “Locked.” If you choose to lock the composite grading, the teachers cannot modify the composite grading created by the system administrators. If it is left unlocked, teachers can decide whether or not to utilize composite grading or modify the recommended percentages for their assigned sections in the Composite Grading tool in the Instruction Module. The image below shows an example of the Composite Grading tab and Detail editor.
The next step in using Composite Grading is determining if you want to use the Auto Grade wizard to auto calculate and post grades to the composite grading task or if you want to open the grading window and allow your teachers to post grades to the composite grading task, or a combination of the two. In our example above, the Semester grading task is the composite grading task. If you decide to open the grading window for the Semester grading task, the teacher still has the ability to override the calculated composite grade while the grading window is open. If you want to prevent the teachers from modifying the Semester grade, you can use the Auto Grade wizard only to post the grades for you. In some instances, you might want to use auto grading and then open the grading window to cut down the amount of work that teachers need to perform, because they would then only have to work with the students whose grades need to be adjusted. The next section of the article explains how to use the Auto Grade module.
The Auto Grading Wizard, or Auto Grade, is used when composite grading is used at the administrative level. Auto Grade will assign final grades based on the settings established for composite grading.
Auto Grade
Auto Grade is found in Grading & Standards > Auto Grade.
Select the Grading Task for which to grade. This list will include grading tasks, such as the semester grade, from any course that has composite grading set up. When the grading task is selected from here, the calculations based on weight will happen on a per course basis, meaning that our English class with 50% for each quarter will be calculated as such, while another class with only 25% across four other tasks will simultaneously calculate to produce a final grade.
Select the Score Group with which to assign grades. As mentioned before, this must be a score group to which minimum percents have been assigned.
Check the box next to Overwrite Existing Grades if you wish to overwrite existing data entered by teachers or administrators. Select Auto Grade Students when finished. Grades will then be posted for the selected grading task.
After the grades are posted for the students and approved for the student’s transcripts, the administration can use the Student Portfolio tool for posting the grades to the student’s transcripts. Please feel free to have your system administrator contact NASIS support for assistance on setting up composite grading properly for your school.
Hot Topics Health Flags
Two System Preferences have been added to control the display of health conditions.
The Flagable Health condition preference gives districts the option to display health flags for students. If this preference is set to Yes, it will be possible for flagable conditions to appear in the student Toolbar. If it is set to No, conditions will not appear in the student toolbar even if they are marked as flagable. The condition flag is a blue EMS icon with the words "Health Condition" next to it.
The Default Health Conditions preference gives districts the option to display Infinite Campus loaded health conditions. When this is set to No, only conditions the district has entered will appear in the condition drop list for selection. When it is set to Yes, both district-entered and Campus-loaded conditions will appear.
Two checkboxes have been added to the Condition List in System Admin.
The active flag allows districts to inactivate conditions they no longer wish to use. When this is selected, the condition will no longer be available from the list when assigning a condition to a student. If this code was previously assigned to a student, the condition will remain assigned for that student.
The flagable checkbox allows a district to mark a condition as one they wish to be able to flag for students with this condition assigned to them. Marking a condition as flagable causes the flagable checkbox to appear selected anytime the condition is assigned to a student. It can be unselected if a particular student with this condition should not be flagged.
A check box to flag allows districts to display a flag for this particular condition and student. A condition must be marked as flagable in System Administration before the flag will appear for a student even if flag is marked when the condition is saved. This allows individual students to be omitted from having a flag display next to their name even if they have a flagable condition.
User Warning is what the user will see when they hover their cursor over the flag. Students with multiple flagged conditions will have each warning display separated by a semicolon.
Did You Know? GPA Calculation
It is often difficult trying to figure out how GPA is calculated in NASIS. There are three types of GPAs that schools are looking for; each one of them distinct and used for a different purpose. They are the Term GPA, Cumulative GPA, and the Rolling Cumulative GPA. The Term GPA is used to determine honor roll and dean’s list distinctions, and is displayed on the report cards or other canned reports. The Cumulative GPA is displayed on transcripts and used for class ranking. The Rolling Cumulative GPA is used to make a good prediction at what a student’s Cumulative GPA maybe at the end of the school year. The Rolling Cumulative GPA is helpful when deciding valedictorians or honor graduates. Here are some basic tips to follow when figuring out the GPA in NASIS:
Term GPA is based upon two components: the GPA weight on the grading task and the GPA value of the score. A common misconception is to think that the number of credits a course offers affects the calculation of that course’s CUM GPA. If a course offers more or less credits than another course offered by your school, and should have more or less weight on the GPA calculation, then be sure to modify the course’s GPA Weight accordingly. To get more in-depth resources that show where the components of GPA calculations are housed in NASIS, please refer to the Technical Reference on GPA Calculations in the Documentation area on the Customer Support Portal.
The basic formula for calculating a student’s Term GPA in NASIS is:
1.The GPA value for a score is multiplied by the corresponding GPA weight for the score. (This is done for each score within the specified term.)
2.All values from step 1 are added together.
3.The resulting value is divided by the total number of GPA weights for all scores within the specified term.
It is important to understand that the Term GPA in NASIS is not the same as the Cumulative GPA. The term GPA is calculated for each term independently. A student’s Cumulative GPA is the most current average of their GPA history, spanning all transcript items. It is often considered the most “official” form of GPA.
Note: The calculation for the Cum GPA is the same as the calculation for the Term GPA, except the GPA weights are derived from a different location in NASIS. This time the GPA weight comes from the course itself. The grading tasks used may also differ.
The basic formula for calculating a student’s Cumulative GPA in NASIS is:
1.The GPA value for a score is multiplied by the corresponding GPA weight for the score.
2.All values for Step 1 are added together.
3.The resulting value is divided by the total number of GPA weights for all scores.
The Rolling Cumulative GPA is a combination of the Cum GPA and the Rolling Term GPA. It starts with all of the transcript records that have been posted for prior years. Any grades already posted during the current year, are taken from each of the Term GPAs, and not the Cum GPA, to form a Rolling Term GPA.
Note: The Rolling Cumulative GPA is an estimate and should be used for projection purposes only. (If a district does not post to transcripts until the end of the school year, then the Rolling Cumulative GPAs is often used to determine Class Rank.)
The basic formula for calculating a student’s Cumulative GPA in NASIS is:
1.A student’s existing Cumulative GPA is multiplied with the existing Cumulative GPA Weights for all existing scores (except any posted Transcript reports for the current year)
2.The Rolling Term GPA is multiplied with the Rolling Term GPA Weight. These elements are taken from the term scores existing for the current school year.
3.The Cumulative GPA Weight and the Rolling Term GPA Weight are added together.
4.The values from Step 1 and Step 2 are added together.
5.The result is divided by the value from Step 3. The final number is the Rolling Cumulative GPA.
ISEP funds are calculated directly from the data that schools enter into NASIS. It is important to each school that their data be accurate and complete. One way to check this is to periodically run your ISEP Instructional Verification report, located at the bottom of the index tree in NASIS in the module called “BIE Reports.” Path:BIE Reports>ISEP Instructional Verification
This report will help you identify if areas need to be revisited and updated in NASIS. For instance, it is often noticed that KG students are missing their tribal codes until well into the school year. With NASIS being a real-time information system, schools should focus on ensuring that all data is entered in a timely manner.
At the end of the year, school officials will be required to sign the ISEP Certification report, which is the official ISEP report. This report is pulled directly from the data that is input into NASIS by your school. To ensure a smooth process for your school and the ELO office, run your ISEP Verification and update areas that need it. If you need help interpreting an ISEP Verification Report, please see the ISEP Verification User Guide on the project portal or give your TCE a call to get a copy e mailed to you.
Another way schools can check their data in NASIS is to run the BIE Validation Report that is in the same area as the ISEP Verification Report. The report validates some of the ISEP data in NASIS and shows you errors or possible conflicts in the data (warnings). Each instance on the report is a link to make it easy to fix any data in question. Give each of the reports a try and be sure to let us know if you have any questions.
