How Do I Import Teacher Marks and Attendance from a Third-Party Gradebook?

Schoolmaster for Windows/Macintosh systems equipped with the Classroom Module can import Elementary, Secondary, and Standards marks from third-party gradebook programs that are capable of producing a tab delimited text file with the characteristics described below.

In Schoolmaster, the Import Classroom utility (Utility, Import/Export, Import Classroom) provides five import options that can read records from the files created by the third-party gradebooks; depending on the data classroom teachers extract for import to Schoolmaster. As each individual record is read, the marks and comments are posted to the to the appropriate teacher marks file in Schoolmaster: Elementary, Secondary, or Standards.

Before Importing

• Acquire the Schoolmaster Classroom Module licensed for an appropriate number of teacher/users.
• In the User file, identify appropriate teachers as Classroom Users (Setup, General, Users, select name, choose Task, Toggle Classroom User).
• Ensure that the third-party gradebook and Schoolmaster use matching identification numbers for courses, sections, instructors, and students.
• When multiple marks are to be imported to Schoolmaster, to be successfully imported, the third-party gradebook must order the records to match the mark positions in Schoolmaster.
• The fields in each record must be tab delimited and all records must terminate with a carriage return/line feed pair.

Important! Narrative marks may include tabs, carriage returns, and line feeds; these characters compromise the integrity of the tab delimited file format. When creating the tab delimited text file, the third-party gradebook must translate them to the following: tab = ASCII character 167; lf (line feed) = ASCII character 176; cr (carriage return) = ASCII character 177.

• Ensure that all files to be imported reside in the same folder when the import options are used.

Import File Formats

Elementary Marks Import File Format

Filename = SME###E???.RXP where ### = class code and ??? = subject code

File contains:

1. Student ID
2. Current Mark

Secondary Marks Import File Format

Filename = SMS###.RXP where ### = course-section code

File contains:

1. Student ID
2. Mark 1
3. Mark 2
4. Mark 3
5. Mark 4
6. Comment 1
7. Comment 2
8. Comment 3

Standard Marks Import File Format

Filename = SMA###A???.RXP where ### = homeroom/course-section code and ??? = subject code

File contains:

1. Student ID
2. Mark 1
3. Mark 2
4. Mark 3
5. Mark 4
6. Mark 5
7. Mark 6
8. Mark 7
9. Mark 8

Roster Attendance Import File Format

Filename = ATN###.RXP where ### = class code or course-section code

File contains:

1. Student ID
2. Date in MM/DD/YYYY format
3. Any attendance code matching those in the Schoolmaster Attendance Code File (Setup, General, Attendance Codes).

Note that incoming attendance entries from teachers do not overwrite pre-existing attendance entries created by office staff for the same student / day / course-section

Automating Imports from Third-party Gradebooks

To automatically import the most recently saved third-party gradebook files, invoke smwin.exe along with any of the following command-line switches to run the corresponding menu option.