Little SIS- Automated Rostering for Google Classroom

Little SIS and Google Classroom

We have fully integrated Google Classroom and Skyward Qmlativ through a system called Little SIS.  Teachers and staff members may receive emails with the subject line or email heading similar to "Re: Little SIS has made updates to your Google Classroom classes". 

 

Frequently Asked Questions (F.A.Q.s)

 

Q. What does Little SIS do?

• Creates new Classroom class invites as needed for Student Information System (SIS) rostered classes.
• Populates / updates student rosters on any SIS linked Classroom classes. Adds / removes students from Google Classroom rosters based on changes in your SIS.
• Notifies teachers in a single email per day of all new classes and/or changes performed on their classes. Note: Emails are only sent to teachers if changes have been performed.

Q. What does Little SIS not do?

• Sync grades from Classroom back to your SIS.
• Transmit student data to any location other than Google Classroom.
• Store student data anywhere outside the local filesystem
• Archive classes that are removed from rosters
  • This is a safety precaution to ensure a good end-user experience for students and teachers.
  • If the sync included an automated archive function, there would be a risk of archiving a live section containing active assignments.

Q. How does Little SIS help me as a teacher with Google Classroom? 

Little SIS will analyze Google Classrooms for all teachers with a KIPP Texas account. If a teacher has a classroom outside the domain, the classroom is not affected. If there is no match, a new classroom is created for a teacher.

 

Q. What do I do if Little SIS has created a classroom for me?

Teachers have the ability to accept or decline a newly created classroom. Little SIS will create new class invites -  invitations will be created for classes for which you don’t currently have a Google Classroom class.  A class invite is just that -- an invitation!  It looks like what you see below. 

 

Classes created by Little SIS do not become visible to a enrolled student until you “accept” it in Classroom. 

 

Check your Outlook junk folder, clutter, and inbox for invites. If you don't see them, you can also see outstanding class invites within classroom.google.com

 

Q. What happens if I click “Accept” on a class?

If you accept, the Google Classroom will remain in sync with the rosters from Skyward Qmlativ.

• Little SIS will Add and Remove students in Google Classroom once you’re using a class created by Little SIS (or one that has been linked), any changes detected in your official class roster will result in a roster change in Google Classroom.  Typically, once things are up and running, these changes will happen on a daily basis.  Any time Little SIS makes a change to your Classroom rosters, you will receive an email notification summarizing all changes.

Q. What happens if Little SIS accidentally removes a student from one of my classes?

This is a totally recoverable situation, and can sometimes happen if we have errors (like the wrong email address) in the student information system, or if you have added students to your classes that are not on the official roster.  Adding the student back via the join code will restore all of their work in the class, but you should also notify the IT Applications immediately if this happens, since it may end up happening every time we sync unless we fix the underlying roster data issue.

 

Q. How will I know if Little SIS has linked or made changes to my existing Classroom classes?

Little SIS will send you an email any time it makes any changes to a Classroom class, the class roster, or when it has been linked to any existing Classroom class.

 

Q. What happens if I click “Decline” on a class?

If you decline a class we’ve created for you, it just means that you will be “on your own” when it comes to managing your student rosters in Google Classroom. You will not receive any further messages (this school year).  

 

Declined classes can be re-provisioned by IT Applications later, but it can require a bit of legwork by IT Application, so please only decline an invite if is truly not needed!  If you’re not sure whether you want to use the class at the time you receive an invite, it is strongly recommended to leave the invite untouched, so you can decide at a later time the best option!

 

Q. What do I do if I don't see any Google Classrooms created for me?

Only teachers that are flagged as the primary teacher (teacher of record) and assigned sections in Skyward Qmlativ will have Google Classrooms created via Automated Rostering.

 

If you need to see students in various Google Classrooms, you will have to ask the Primary Teacher to add/invite you as a co-teacher. Reference this Zendesk support article on how to invite a staff member as a co-teacher to a Google Classroom.

 

Note: Google caps the number of teachers in a Google Classroom at 1 primary teacher and 49 co-teachers. This cap is set by Google and cannot be adjusted. This means only 50 total teachers can have access to a Google Classroom.

 

Q. How can I tell the difference between an invitation to teach a course that Little SIS created vs. an invitation to be a co-teacher that was sent to me by a colleague?

The owner of a class can invite co-teachers from the About page in a Classroom class.  These invitations will look like what you see on the left (below), where the primary teacher's G Suite avatar is visible and the note simply says "You've been invited to teach this class." 

Invitations from Little SIS Sync (which uses an admin account to create classes using Google's APIs) look like the tile you see on the right ("You've been invited to teach this class by an administrator.")

 

Q. What if I’m using Google Classroom in a way that’s different than the way my SIS classes are organized?  (Examples: combined sections, differentiated groups, etc.)

Little SIS can only sync classes in a way that is matched to the official class list in the SIS.  There’s currently no ability to combine or split SIS sections.  If Little SIS sees existing classes that are very different from what’s in the SIS, it will simply exclude them from the Little SIS sync.  This just means you are “on your own” to manage the rosters (i.e. you will need to add and remove students appropriately) for customized classes that are different than your official classes. 

 

Q. Do students have to accept the invitation to the Google Classroom?

Students will not receive any information about this Classroom until it is accepted by the teacher. Once it is accepted, it will automatically be available to students in their Google Classroom dashboard. No link invites or codes for students would be needed.

  

Q. How soon after a student has a schedule entered in Skyward should I expect to see a student in my Google Classroom? 

The sync between Little SIS and Skyward Qmlativ occurs every evening after 6 p.m. You should expect 24 to 48 hours after a student has a schedule entered in Skyward to see a student in Google Classroom.

 

Q. What information in Skyward is used to generate a Google Classroom?

• Academic Year
• 3 -digit school ID
• Skyward Course ID
• Skyward Section Number

These Skyward data points are concatenated to provide a unique reference and generate a Google Classroom. Making changes to the aforementioned data points in Skyward will generate new Google Classrooms for the assigned primary teacher (co-teacher). 

 

Q. What information can I not modify in Google Classroom?

Users cannot modify the Course Name or Section Number in Google Classroom. If you modify this information, it will be overwritten with data every night by the automated sync with Skyward.

 

Q. What are the limits of Google Classroom?

Please reference this table.