MarkBook - SAS Import File

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SAS - MarkBook Export File

SAS provides a student administration management system for numerous Ontario school districts. MarkBook imports classes from a whole-school SAS file. Once classes are assembled, teachers may import timetables from SAS as well. MarkBook will submit summary data, attendance, learning skills, and comment codes back to SAS electronically as described in section 11-3.

Some school districts using SAS have created their own export files. These vary considerably in the number of fields available and in the order of those fields. However, once the file is in ascii or text format, as described in section 4-4, MarkBook will import students class by class.

There are built-in SAS exports to both MarkBook and LockerManager^TM. The MarkBook export is an ascii (plain text) file. The following Notepad image shows a sample of such a file called RCMKBK_MP3_C.TXT. This file is a built-in export from SAS. There are 11 fields in this particular file. Each row (a record) contains 11 items (fields): Student Number, First Name, Last Name, Course Code & Section, Gender, Home Form, Date Of Birth, Telephone Number, Teacher Number, Student Email, and Parent Email. All fields are encased in quotation marks and separated by commas. All students in the school appear in this file. Note that each student's record is repeated for each course taken. For instance, the first student, Laurie, is taking two courses. Kristopher is taking three courses. A SAS file for a large school may contain more that 10,000 rows (records).

SAS's export file for MarkBook

MarkBook will "filter" students from this whole-school file based on the fourth field, Course Code & Section. Use the techniques described in section 4-4 and section 4-5. Match the fields as per the following image. Near the center left is a counter indicating that this SAS file has 1613 records of which we see only the first one for fictional student Laurie Alton. School districts use a variety of numbers and letters for Home Forms. In this sample, the Home Form is numeric - 133. Other districts may use the first few letters of the Home Form teacher's name, or a traditional designator like 9A or 12D. Whatever Home Form designation is used, it will appear as the sixth field in each record.

Importing a SAS file into MarkBook

Match the fields as per this image. Align MarkBook's Import If #1 field with the SAS Course field - field 4. Type the desired course code and section into the Import If #1 contains line. In the above example, the teacher is selecting all students taking ENG3C102. NOTE: the text must be an exact match. Note the difference between the letter O and the number 0 above. Some SAS districts use the letter "I" instead of the number "1". If the course code contains a dash, e.g. ENG3C1-02, a dash must be included. Click the Import Students button at the lower right and MarkBook will hunt the entire SAS file to find and import all students taking the specified course code and section.

If planning to submit summary data to SAS electronically, as per section 11-3, it's important that the student numbers in the MarkBook records are an exact match. Even if the class was originally typed by hand, it's possible to add the correct student numbers using MarkBook's Update-From-File function as described in section 4-8.

TIMETABLE FILE FROM SAS

SAS also exports a whole-school timetable file. This Notepad image is a single student's record in a file for the whole school. It contains all timetabled periods, courses, sections, rooms, teachers, current grades in SAS, and current attendance in each course. Once a class is assembled as above, import this data as described in section 4-2. Run this timetable file again on a regular basis and re-import it to pick up more recent data. This view of the data is very cryptic - MarkBook will display this data in a manner that makes sense.

Manual: Go to section 4-8 to see how to update classes from a file.