RISC Student Levels
One of the functions many schools requested in RISC was a way to track student behaviour using Levels. Almost every school we talked to seemed to do this in different ways, meaning that whatever Levels solution we chose to implement had to be both simple and flexible. The method implemented had to also work seamlessly with the existing RISC data in over 1,000 schools.
Just about every school uses the Type Lookup in RISC to identify "what" the incident record was about. In one or two words, WHAT actually happened? With that in mind, it was logical to add a user-definable points-value to each of those Incident Types, and then as incident records were added to RISC against a particular student, all of the incident type values could be added up in order to produce an overall Student Level, giving staff a general insight into not only that student, but all students with RISC entries.
It all starts with the Incident Type Lookup and Levels Values as defined on the RISC Admin Lookups page.
The Lookup list and values shown here are just examples, your school can choose whatever incidents you wish to record and what their values should be. You can adjust these values whenever you like and all Levels calculated will assume the new values. Positive incident types such as Commendations should reflect Positive Levels values, while negative incident types related to discipline should reflect negative values or scores.
From there, it's just a matter of entering incident records into RISC as they occur. Automatically in the background, RISC will tally up all the associated level scores and display an overall Student Level whenever a student record is displayed on the screen.
Here, we can see above the orange Save button that Rebecca's Current Level is '10'. This is better explained on the Level tab in the RISC Student Alerts window to the bottom-right. Of the five records in RISC associated with Rebecca, three are positive and two are negative. The negative tally seen here is actually higher than the positive tally, this is because the Levels Value associated with one of here incident records is a high negative value (Vandalism/Damage = -30 here).
It is understood that a single value cannot be used to represent the severity of a particular incident, so the RISC Student Levels sub-system offers RISC Executive users with the ability to make a 'manual adjustment' to any particular student's Levels Record. In the above example, the executive staff member has decided that the Vandalism incident did not warrant the full -30 point value and has decided to set an adjustment of +20 to Rebecca's overall record. In addition, the 'Reason for the Level Adjustment' has been lodged against her record, so anyone that calls up Rebecca's details will see why the adjustment was made.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The Levels Values used in calculating a student's Current Level only come from that student's latest 25 records in RISC. If a student has more than 25 records in RISC, the values from those older incidents will not be used in calculating their Current Level - but the incidents will always be recorded in RISC. RISC calculates a students Level by looking at the weighting attached to each recorded incident and adding them all up. But some schools like to reset their counters after specified periods, so with v10 and later, RISC allows you to set when calculations are reset. They could be annually, each semester, each school term or each calendar month. So basically, if you set your Levels Reset to be each term, then RISC will not tally up incidents that occurred prior to this term in calculating a student's level.
In the Reports menu, the Student Record Report will produce an unadjusted Current level for every student in RISC which reflects EVERY incident record in the database and does not take into account any adjustments.
The RISC Student Levels system is very flexible and we are certain that schools will find unique and effective ways of implementing and using the data in their school.
The Register of
Individual Student Contact (RISC) is developed & distributed
by Marillion Designs.
Copyright © 1995-2012 Marillion Designs. All rights reserved.
Information in this document is subject to change without notice.
Other products and companies referred to herein are trademarks
or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
