MicroGrade Online is designed to allow administrators to upload data to the system from text files, including staff members, students and classes. If you can export section data from your school information system (SIS) into Excel, you can easily export that data from Excel into a text file for upload to MicroGrade Online.

How Sections Work In MicroGrade Online:

As described in a previous tutorial, courses in MicroGrade Online can be considered as a school-wide area of study. Each Course contains one or more classes (Sections). Each Section (class) has an assigned instructor (or more than one instructor for team teaching).) For example, you might have a course called "Mathematics", divided into several Sections: Math 101, Algebra I, Algebra II, Calculus, etc. Sections can be considered as individual classes within a course, eachwith their own teacher, set of students, meeting times, etc. The hierarchy would be something similar to the following example:

Course Title: Mathematics

• Section: Math 101, Period 1, Mr. Jones
• Section: Math 101, Period 1, Mr. Smith
• Section: Algebra I, Period 3, Mrs. Smith
• Section: Algebra I, Period 4, Mrs. Smith
• Section: Algebra II, Period 5, Mr. Robertson
• Section: Calculus, Period 6, Mr. Johnson

To export a text file from Excel:

1. Open an Excel file containing the section data you wish to import.

2. Make sure the file only contains the following information and is displayed in this order:

• Unique ID: This ID must be unique and not used by an existing section in the system, otherwise the uploaded section will replace the existing section.
• Course ID: This must match a unique Course ID already defined in the system. If the Course ID does not match an existing Course ID in the system, you will receive an error and the section will not be uploaded.
• Section Title: The title of the section, such as "Algebra I Period 1"
• Start Day: The date this section will start, such as 9/1/2009.
• End Day: The date this section will end, such as 12/1/2008.
• Meeting Days: The meeting days for this section, such as MWF, TTh, or M-F
• Start Time: The start time for this section, such as 10:00 AM
• End Time: The end time for this section, such as 2:00 PM
• Meeting Place: The meeting place for this section, such as Room 110, Building A
• Professor: Enter a staff member's email address as the professor for this class. If the section is team-taught, you may enter multiple email addresses separated by commas.
• Grader (Optional): Enter a staff member's email address as the grader for this class. You may enter multiple email addresses, separated by commas.
• Students (Optional): You may enter a comma-separated list of student IDs to populate the class with students at this time.

3. Go to the File menu and click on Save As

4. The Save As dialog will appear. Enter a name for your file, such as "Sections", then click the "Save As Type" drop-down menu at the bottom and select "Text (Tab Delimited)(*.txt)

5. Click the Save button to save your text file.

To upload a text file of sections to MicroGrade Online:

1. Click the System Setup link that appears on the right-hand side of the page under the My School header.

2. The System Setup page will appear. Click on the Upload Data link.

3. The Upload Data page will appear. Click on the Upload Sections link

4. The Upload Sections page will appear. Scroll to the bottom of the page. Click the Academic Term drop-down menu and select the term you wish to upload the sections into.

5. Click the Browse button and the File Upload dialog will appear. Locate the file you wish to upload and click on it to select it, then click the Open button to proceed.

7. Click the Field Separator drop-down and select the field separator that corresponds to your file (Pipe, Tab or Comma). In our example we created a tab-delimited file, so we will select Tab from the drop-down menu.

8. Click the Upload button and an upload progress page will display. The records uploaded will be displayed, along with any errors encountered. When the upload is completed, a button labeled "Click here to continue" will appear. Clicking this button will return you to the MicroGrade Online home page.