Schools and users familiar with both Master Scheduler and the standards Subject system will notice there are some interesting differences between the two systems. Let's take a look at the differences and similarities.
Similarities between Sections & Subjects
Correspond to Enrollments, Attendance, & Gradebooks
Both sections and subjects are used to setup classes with students' enrollment and Gradebooks for teachers. If you would like a student to be accessible to a teacher for attendance-taking, grading in their Gradebook and Report Cards, and a variety of other systems (Class Discussions, Homework, etc.), they will need to be enrolled in the proper Subject or Section
Appear in Subject-Based Screen in Report Cards
Teachers can enter Report Card grades for their students in the Subject-Based screen in the Report Cards module for classes configured as Subjects or Sections. Subject-Specific Criteria and/or Standards will also appear in this screen for both class configurations. Administrators can review and edit the Subject-Based screen for teachers' report card entries - as well as view these in the Report Card directly, if allowed.
Unique to an Academic Term
Changes you make to Subjects' or Sections' configuration will stay within the academic term, if you have others already setup. This means that if you need to edit information for Trimester 1 while your school is in Trimester 2, any changes you make to the configurations will not copy into Trimester 2.
Differences between Sections & Subjects
Not Interchangeable in Reports
Subjects and Sections may work very similar in theory, but because sections connect to another level of information (Courses) they are handled a little differently in our system. As a result, they are not interchangeable in Reports. For example, if you are looking to get info on Section Names and look at a "Subject Name" field, the results will not be as expected.
Use Different Types of Attendance
Sections and Subjects can have different types of attendance. Although both are accessed through the "Attendance" module link in the main menu bar, "Section-Based" attendance has a different screen than "Subject-Based" attendance - though these screens do look very similar. In addition, Subjects are optimized to work for the Class Teacher setup for Homeroom-based attendance, while Sections are not necessarily.
Work with Different Scheduling Systems
This is the crux of the difference between Sections and Subjects. Sections are part of the Master Scheduler system while subjects are not. Although there are other scheduling options available for schools using Subjects and looking to schedule students, if you have more complex scheduling needs, please contact our support about information regarding Master Scheduler.
Of course, if you have any further questions, please do contact our support via chat or email.