Creating the Course and Student Submission Files

Once all of the prerequisite data has been setup, you can move on to collecting and analyzing the Staff and Student Course submission files.

This is done on the NJ>NJSmart>Course Submission tab.

The screen is designed to collect test data for each school individually.

When all schools have successfully collected their data, the final data files can be created for the entire district and then submitted to NJSMART.

The final submission must be for the entire district. The individual schools are listed here for testing purposes only.

For an FAQ, click here. For NJ Smart documentation, click here.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Collecting Data
• Clearing Data
• Exporting the Data
• Determining if a Major Error has Occurred
• Viewing the Results Log
• Student List Generation Tools

Collecting Data

The Collect Data button will collect all of the data for both submission files at the same time.

This will ensure that the data in the two files are never out of sync. An internal Log file () is created that contains a play by play audit trail of how the data was analyzed and collected.

Clearing Data

If data is collected for a school that was not intended, the clear button will remove it from Genesis.

Exporting the Data

There are two buttons for each file that exports the data out of Genesis.

The Excel icon will export the data to a Microsoft Excel (.XLS) file. The Excel file contains a few extra columns of information that will make analyzing the data easier (such as the teacher’s homeroom and student’s grade level.)

The disk icon will export the file in the NJSMART required .CSV Comma Separated Values format. It is very important that the .CSV file is not opened in Excel before submitted it to NJSMART.

Excel is known to corrupt CSV files by removing all leading zeros off of the fields.

Options

Adjust Course End Date

NJSmart does not allow Course Section End dates to be in the future.  Even during practice submissions prior the end of the school year.  

Rather than removing the End Dates and corresponding grades and completion status, you may check off the "Adjust Course End Date" check box.

This will ADJUST your Course Section End Date to be TODAY if your Course Section End Date is greater than TODAY.

This should used in conjunction with Use Practice Grade for test submissions prior to the end of school.

Use Practice Grade

Select a Marking Period in the “Use Practice Grade” column to obtain fake “Final Grades” to test with if no FG exists. System will always first try to use FG but if none exists, it will instead use the MP grade you select.

The practice submission for this collection starts in May and ends sometime in June. Because you will not have final grades for the majority of your students’ courses at this time, Genesis allows you to pick a Marking Period to use to obtain grades to test with. Grades from the selected Marking Period will be used as if they were the Final Grades.

This is very useful for getting a good idea of what your final file will look like at the end of the school year. This should used in conjunction with Use Adjust Course End Date for test submissions prior to the end of school.

Use Other ID

Check the “Use Other ID” checkbox to use the “Other ID” field from your Staff records instead of the Genesis “Teacher ID."

Normally in the Staff Course Submission file, the LSID (Local School Identifier) is exported from the Staff’s Teacher ID in Genesis.

If the LSID that was submitted to NJSMART was not the Teacher Id from your Genesis Staff records (this is most likely true), check the “Use Other ID” field to tell Genesis to swap in the Other ID field number instead.

The Other ID field in your Staff records should contain the ID # that was sent to NJSMART from your HR/Payroll software package.

Always Use Elem HR for grades PK-05 / Always use Elem HR for grades PK-04

Check the “Use only Elem Homeroom for grades PK-05” checkbox if your PK-05 students have schedules in Genesis and you want to ignore them and instead have Genesis create one course per school teacher in the Staff Course Submission file. 

This will only apply to School Teachers marked with a grade level of K-5 (K-4).

If your PK-05 students do not have schedules in Genesis this option does not do anything. Genesis will create fake courses for the NJSMART Courses Submission for these students on the fly when schedules do not exist for students.

Never Use Elem HR

If this is checked, Genesis will never assign a HR as course for a teacher who is not assigned to a scheduled course.

If teacher does not have scheduled courses, that teacher will not be included in collection.

Collect Trial Data for a Single School

Locate your school in the list. Click the "Collect Data" button for that school. When the collection process completes, you can download either or both the Staff and Student Data files as a spreadsheet by using the “Excel” icon, or as a .csv file by using the floppy disk icon.

Collect Data for the Entire District, Either for a Trial or Final Submission

To submit the full district’s data to NJ SMART, locate the control at the bottom of the list of schools. You can export the entire district’s collection either as an Excel spreadsheet or as a .csv file.

Additional Setting (for all schools in collection)

(Recommended) Check here to export student's dropped and ungraded courses (will still exclude student courses dropped at the start of the school year)

Selecting and Saving this option will force the Course Submission to include students who dropped/transferred from a secondary course before receiving a final grade.  

NOTE:  It will still remove students who dropped the course at the beginning of the school year.

Do not include student course if it was dropped at beginning of school year prior to Sept 15

Check here to export all courses NOT marked as Exclude from NJSmart Course Submission. 

This will include courses NOT marked as Graded Courses in Curriculum

Check here to add local school code to all course codes (to be used if you have multiple schools/buildings with duplicate CDS).

This should be used if you have multiple local schools in Genesis using the same CDS code.  As local school code is not part of Course Submission, this will create multiple instances of the same course if any course codes overlap.  

Option adds the local school code to the start of the course code.  So School ABCs Course 050 will appear as ABC-050 in the collection.

Check here to add to modify Rigor on Elem HR courses based on 'Basic Skills Teacher' setting of HR teacher.

When using Always use Elem HR for grades PK-05 option, checking this will change the Course Level rigor from G - General to B - Basic if the School Teacher of the HR is set as a Basic Skills Teacher.

Merge Teacher Course Sections when days between teacher exit and teacher reentry is equal to or less than X days

NJSmart Only allows one row per teacher per course section. If a teacher leaves and then comes back to a course, NJSmart only wants the LATEST entry date (see SectionEntryDate in NJSmart StaffCourseRosterDataHandbook).

This can cause issue that affect mSGP as the actual time in course may not be an accurate reflection. The new screen option "Merge Teacher Course Sections when days between teacher exit and teacher reentry is equal to or less than X" allows you to combine teacher stints in a course.

For example, if you set X equal to 20 days and the Teacher taught from 9/1/2015 - 5/1/2016, then again from 5/19/2016 - 6/20/2016 then the record in the course submission will be exported as having taught from 9/1/2015 - 6/20/2016.

Otherwise, the record would be exported as simply 05/19/2016 - 6/20/2016 as per the handbook rules.

Determining if a Major Error has Occurred

If a major or ‘fatal’ error occurs, the collection process will stop and the school in which the error occurred will be highlighted with a red background.

Placing your cursor on the highlighted school will display a Tool Tip with the error:

Click on the LOG () and you will most likely see a stack trace error pointing you to the issue.

A common error here is that there is an erroneous / too long STATE ID attached to a staff member.

Viewing the Results Log

When you use the “Collect Data” tool, a log of the collection, including error messages, can be viewed by clicking the paperclip icon on the right side of the screen: .

The log details the steps the process has gone through to collect the data and includes any errors, including fatal errors, encountered along the way.

Student List Generation Tools

When using either of these tools; if a list with that name already exists; it will be deleted and recreated.

• Create a dynamic student list for each grade level in the current school (Top of the screen drop down list.)
• Create a dynamic student list for each homeroom in the current school (Top of the screen drop down list.)