Administrator's Plus Report Cards Manual - Rediker Software, Inc.

Chapter 9
Archive
Archive
Specification
UNARCHIVE
(continued)
Description
In order to save a lot of disk space, information about each course such
as its name and how many credits it is worth is only stored in one place:
the MASTER COURSE LIST. Students' report cards and archival files
contain the course numbers of the courses they are taking or have
taken. When it needs to, the computer matches up the course numbers
with the Master Course List in order to find out the names and other
information about the courses in students files.
It is important to understand that there is only ONE master course list
and that it is used for both students' current courses in their report
cards files as well as for their previous courses in their archival files. If
you change something in the master course list for a course number,
that change will be carried through to every student that has that
course in their archival files. For example, if you change the name of
COURSE #123 from “English” to “Math”, students' transcripts will show
course #123 as “Math” instead of as the “English” they took. The same
thing will happen of you change the number of credits for a course.
Consequently, it is recommended that you do not remove or change
master course list entries. Instead, just make a new course number if
the number of credits or the name of a course changes.
However, if you must re-organize your master course list, this chapter
will explain an option that allows you to change the course numbers in
students' archival files. In the above example, assume that you have
made a new number for the old “English” course that was COURSE
#123. Assume that COURSE #923 is now “English”. You can use this
option to change all of the “123's” in students' archival files to “923's”.
Transcripts will then correctly show that they took “English” instead of
“Math” which you made into the new COURSE #123. When using this
option, you will be able to specify for which grade levels and for which
archival years this change should take place. In the printing of
transcripts, if a course number is in a student's archival file and NOT in
the master course list, the computer will not know the name of the
course, how many credits it is worth and how it should be weighted.
Consequently, it will print the course number as the course name and
it will not award any credits for the course nor will it count the course
towards any GPA's. If you see any courses like this on a transcript, you
should add the course to the master course list and re-print the
transcript.
9-6 Report Cards Manual