The Core Principal
The PEMS was designed to plan out a set of classes (such at Algebra I, World History, English, and so on) that the student will take over the course of a grade span. A grade span covers multiple years of schooling and represents a planning horizon where student objectives can be achieved.
The core functionality of the PEMS is to allow adminstrators the abilty to pre-plan any number of "programs of study", which are called plans inside of the PEMS. The student can then be assigned a plan, which provides the infomration needed to auto-enroll the student in classes every term until the plan is complete.
This approach differs from many other schoolingrecord keeping approaches. In most countries, students are assigned subjects, such as English, Math, History and so on, that they must take in every year, and there is only only curriculum or syllabus that a school provides in the subject for that year.grade level. This is the same approach taken in the US for Grades K through 8, but not for the high school years, grade 9 through 12. In Highschool, studentstudents pick their individual classes they want to take each term, much like University level education.
An unfortunate disadvantage to allowing students to pick their own classes is that they might not meet all the graduation requirements. In creating a plan instead of picking indiviudal classes, the adminstrator can ensure that students are meeting their various requirements for graduation. AnAnd unfortunate disadvantage to allowing students to pick their own classes is that they might not meet all the graduation requirements. Byby enrolling a student in a plan, the administrator will ensure that the planstudent meets the requirements. By creating muliple compliant plans, a school can offer a great deal of customization in the program, while esuring all requiremetns are met.
To create a plan, the adminstrator makes a Plan record, then adds templates as child records totto the plan. The template links a class from the class list to a grade level and term label. AFor example, a template states,contains forthe example,information that the student will take Algebra 1A in the first term of ninth grade.grade.
When the Student is enrolled in the plan, the PEMS reads the templates associated with the plan and creates incompletea set of enrollment record.records linked to the appropriate student term. An enrollment record links the student term, the class from the class list, and recordsalso contains the student's final grade the student achieved in the class. the The completed enrollment recordrecords isare displayed on the student's transcript. The status of an enrollment reflects if athe studentcourse is taking the class currenlty,planned, completed the class or ifin progress.
When students are picking and choosing their classe, many technologies are unable to provide an instant assesment on whether the student iswill planningcomplete totheir takegraduation therequirements. class inWith followingthis terms.
Atat any point in time, a student's enrollment records can be viewed andas a whole. And because each record is marked complete/incomplete, one can immediatly asses a student's progress towards completion assessed by the number of completed enrollments. This approach addresses a problem that many student information systems have in trying to assess how a student is progressing towards graduation. When students are p[icking an choosing their classes,academic it is very difficultgoals.