Sections Table
Relevant Topics
In real life, Sections are a set of students taking a particular class. In a standard brick and mortar school, a sections are like the physical classroom. There may be multiple teachers teaching English 9 in a school, each with their own physical classroom number. There are no traditional sections in the PEMS universe since there is no needs to physically separate students into various classrooms. However, students from multiple learning locations can all be enrolled in the same Moodle Course, and only their own teacher should see their work. So PEMS uses the term groups to refer to a set of students assigned to a specific teacher. In Summary: 1) PEMS does not use the term sections. 2) Instead Moodle uses the term (virtual) groups.
Curriculum generally refers to the books and exercises used by the teacher to further the student's knowledge. In Moodle, the curriculum is a Moodle Course. Any class may be taught with multiple curriculum, or different text books, and so there are multiple Moodle courses that may be used to teach a Class.
The Teacher of Record is the 'official teacher' of the student for a specific class, or for multiple classes. Various regulatory agencies require the teach of record to be in possession of certifications and credentials. PEMS is designed for virtual schools and so all Teachers of Record are virtual teachers. The teacher of record is legally responsible to give the student their grades.
Where teachers are the qualified and certificated individuals that overlook many virtual students, PEMS allows proctors to supervise students and review their work in Moodle, helping to keep students on track. Proctors are not allowed any access to the SIS, but they are provided limited access to Moodle, and in this way, only see the work of their own group of students. Proctors may be volunteers working in a tutoring club setting, or may simple be a home school parent managing their own student's progress. A homeroom can have multiple proctors, but a proctors may only be assigned to one homeroom.
In real life, a cohort is a set of students at a specific grade level. All ninth graders in 2023 form a set of students, as they move through the various grade levels, we refer to those 2024 ninth graders as a cohort. In Moodle a cohort is a set of students and a teacher(s). Cohorts are primarily used in Moodle for batch enrollment. For the use case that all students in 4th grade should be enrolled in 4th grade math. In this case a Moodle user would define a cohort of 4th graders, then assign the cohort to a specific course. However, using cohorts for enrollment is not useful in PEMS because each student is following a unique program. The unique program is managed in the SIS. In PEMS, all fourth graders are not enrolled in fourth grade math. However, cohorts are still useful for reporting. So in PEMS, Moodle Cohorts are used to identify a set of students under the supervision of a particular teacher (proctor). In this use case, students can be at any grade level since PEMS is designed for mixed grade-level student management. Unfortunately, Moodle Cohorts can not be used to block a teacher from seeing other student's work who are not in their own cohort. In summary 1) Moodle Cohorts are a set of students and their teachers (proctors) 2) the students in the set can be any grade level 3) Cohorts are useful for reporting 4) All teachers can see all students in any cohort.
In Moodle, Groups are used to break up groups of students enrolled in a course. Moodle can enroll hundreds of students in one course, but the teacher would be overwhelmed to grade all the work. Therefore Moodle provides the group option. When teachers and their students are enrolled in the same group, the teacher only sees their own students. In PEMS, Moodle groups are used to block teachers from seeing students that belong to a different location. However, Moodel groups are not defined at the system level in Moodle, they must be defined in each and every course. In Summary: 1) Moodle uses Groups to hide students enrolled in the same course from other teachers. 2) Both the teacher and the student have to be in the same group. 3) Groups MUST be defined for each and every course, Groups can not be defined at the system level.
Sections Overview
Sections are used to manage two important aspects of a virtual school. In a virtual school, an unlimited number of students may take any online course at anytime. However, the teacher of records is still responsible to grade student work and assign final grades. To many students in a course can overwhelm any online teacher, especially as some organizations have a requirement for the student to have virtual, synchronous lessons or for the teacher to hold office hours.