| School setup > Online course request setup

Online course request setup

Using Pearson's parent/student portal, ParentCONNECTxp™, a student can request particular courses for her schedule, and a parent can approve that online course requests [>>], if such approval is required. These requests are transferred to PowerSchool SMS, in which a counselor can review a student's course requests and, on a system where approval is required, approve or reject each request [>>].

Note: For online course requesting, ParentCONNECTxp 4.0 [>>] or later and PowerSchool SMS 7.7 or later are required.

The District Administrator and the School Administrator are both involved in setting up online course requests for a school.

District Administrator tasks:

= Give a school's School Administrator permission to enable and configure online course requests for her school [Table 41].
= Allow prerequisites to be scheduled in the same year: In the Course Catalog, on the Course Scheduling page [>>], ensure that Allow prerequisites in the same year is selected. This is particularly useful in a school on a semester system; for example, where a student can take Math 10 in the second semester and its prerequisite, Math 9, in the first.

School Administrator tasks:

= Ensure that academic plans [>>] are in use in the school

Note: If academic plans are not in use, ensure that for the teacher and counselor roles, the Student Academic Plan permission [>>] is set to Edit or Delete.

We highly recommend the use of academic plans to support online course requests. PowerSchool SMS uses the academic plan assigned to a student to filter the list of courses available to request and to provide the Student Academic Plan Progress Report [>>] to ParentCONNECTxp.

= For the school, enable online course requests [>>].
= For the school, configure each grade level for online course requests [>>]
= [Optional] Require counselor approval to publish online course requests [>>].
= Provide the school's parents and students with access to the school's ParentCONNECTxp web site. Refer to the ParentCONNECTxp Administrator's Guide.

Notes: If necessary, the administrator can configure ParentCONNECTxp in such a way as to restrict students and parents to working only with course requests. Since on a ParentCONNECTxp web site, the online course request section is at the URL "https://[SchoolName]ParentCONNECTxp/OCR", the administrator can create direct links to it from other school sites.

Table 41: Permissions pertaining to online course request setup

To

You need this permission

Set to

Details

To enable and configure online course requests for a school.

School Setup > Online Course Request Setup

Delete

[>>]

Enabling online course requests

The School Administrator has the option to enable students to submit course requests via ParentCONNECTxp. Once the administrator enables students to submit requests, she has the option of requiring counselor and/or parent approval for those requests. Caution: The administrator cannot change these options if an online course request submission period is active (that is, the current date is a date falling between the Availability date and the Submission end date for any grade level [Figure 114]).

To enable online course requests: [SA]

Configuring a grade level for online course requests

Once the school administrator has enabled online course requests for a school [>>], he can decide which grade levels to include and configure each separately. Note: PowerSchool SMS excludes all grade levels when a District Administrator creates a District Planning Calendar.

To configure a grade level for online course requests: [SA]

Figure 114: Online Course Request Setup page

A Availability date: If this date is current or past, PowerSchool SMS locks the fields in that particular grade level row. This date is the start of the student submission window. Note: PowerSchool SMS displays in green any change the administrator makes to this grid until he saves the page.

Requiring counselor approval to publish online course requests

When the School Administrator has set the Counselor approval required option for a school [>>] and a student submits a course request, PowerSchool SMS flags the request as waiting for counselor and publishes it to the student's planning schedule. The administrator has the option of having PowerSchool SMS wait to publish the course requests until a counselor approves the request [>>]. The administrator can do this for each grade level. Caution: When the administrator sets this option for a grade level, PowerSchool SMS locks that grade level's row on the Online Course Request Setup page [Figure 114].

To force approval of course requests for a grade level: [SA]

Figure 115: Force Course Request Approval page

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