Homeroom Overview
Relevant Topics
The Studia Nova Business Model is unique in the industry in that it encourages third parties to set up physical classroom locations for students to gather while Studia Nova, the private school of record, provides the virtual curriculum and record keeping. At these different locations, students can be any grade level and a single teacher can be trained to manage a mixed group of various grade levels. However, each location can be a separate client, and so it is essential that each location only see the student information pertaining to its own students.
PEMS allows commercial partners to enroll students into the Studia Nova SIS, allowing third parties to act as 'resellers' of Studia Nova private school. The partner is provided a Word Press Website to manage enrollment. Thrid party partners also act a supervisors of the student's learning, ensuring they are completing their courses and providing a basic level of help.
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.
The Homeroom
Virtual learning allows families and communities to re-group themselves in unique ways to help students achieve their online learning goals. Read more about One Room School Houses. PEMS is configured to allow third parties to participate in the learning process. A homeroom can be a tutoring club with computers where students come to learn, or a homeroom may be a family with multiple students learning from home.
Homerooms are Studia Nova's B2B clients. The Freedom Library Club (FLC) is the first homeroom client. The organization is a club and may have multiple locations. There may be multiple locations, but the homeroom clients is provided a single recruitment website. Each physical location must identify at least one proctor to supervise the on-site students.
On the partner's enrollment site, prospective students complete an enrollment form. In that enrollment form, the submitter selects a location. This location in the enrollment is a homeroom in PEMS. When a club or organization adds new location, a new homeroom record must be added to PEMS.
Proctors
Where teachers are the qualified and certificated individuals that overlook many virtual students, PEMS allows proctors 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.
Data Relationships
Students are assigned a homeroom, there can be multiple students in a homeroom, but student may only be assigned to one homeroom.
Each homeroom must have one Proctor. A homeroom is allowed multiple proctors, but a proctor may one be assigned to one homeroom.
One organization is provided a Word Press recruitment website, which allows students to enroll on their branded website. The website may have multiple locations. Each location is a homeroom record.
For every homeroom record there is a Moodle cohort. Cohorts are used to help assign students and teachers to the Moodle groups. Moodle cohorts do not provide privacy, only Moodle groups limit which students a proctor can review. Groups must be defined for each course the student takes. The homeroom is used to help assign students to the correct group in the course.